Vihiha County government is working on a project which seeks to produce cheap fertilizer from human waste.
According to James Odiero, the county director of water and sanitation, the move is aimed at cushioning farmers against the high cost of fertilizer.
The Ksh 17 million bio-digester will process human waste of up to six exhausters per day, with the fertilizer sold at a cost of between Ksh 300 and Ksh 500 per bag.
“This will give back returns that were spent on the construction of the project. Every day, we will clean 50 cubic metres that is equivalent to 50,000 litres of waste supplied by six exhausters,” Odiero explained.
The construction of the plant in Ehedwe in Mbale commenced in 2020 after the county received Ksh 17 million from the Water Trust Fund.
“This project will help clean our environment as it will take waste of all manner and keep it. It will also end the culture of constructing toilets every time,” Governor Wilber Ottichilo said.
Elsewhere, even as most people turned to the flush and forget approach, a United Nations report showed that some 892 million people in the world still defecate out in the open.
In the report, UN noted that such practices put other people at risk from from cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.
In Africa, the scale of open defecation varies from country to country, but the overall rate remains high due to lack of general lack of infrastructure.
Rolf Luyendijk, a statistician at the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF said money would be better spent in educating people as to why human waste out in the open is a public health problem.
“There are so many latrines that have been abandoned, or were not used, or got used as storage sheds. We may think it’s a good idea but if people are not convinced that it’s a good idea to use a latrine, they have an extra room,” he said.
