From Birger “Burger” Lundgren, founder of the South-African Blue Community Sanitation Ambassadors:
The Real Problem Is the Sh*t.
I come from the software industry, not the sanitation sector. Maybe that is why I tend to look at sanitation as a system, not just a toilet or a building.
After working with sanitation projects in different countries and environments, from high-end eco lodges to rural schools and informal settlements, I have come to one very simple conclusion:
A toilet is not a sanitation system. If you only build the toilet, all you have built is a chair with a hole.
Sanitation starts when you stand up and walk away.
All over the world, success in sanitation is often measured by one number: how many toilets were built. And yes, toilets are important. Dignity is important. Safety is important. User experience is important.
But the real question is not the toilet. The real question is: What happens to the sh*t after the toilet?
Because that is where the real sanitation problem starts.
A real sanitation system has four parts:
- The toilet (user interface)
- Collection
- Transport
- Treatment and safe reuse or disposal
If one of these parts is missing, the system does not work.
This has become very clear in many parts of the world. India is a well-known example. The country built millions of toilets in a massive national program. An incredible effort that improved dignity and safety for millions of people.
But then the next question came: Who empties the pits? Where does the sludge go? Who treats it? In many cases, the waste is collected and then dumped somewhere else, often untreated. The problem did not disappear. It just moved.
The same situation exists in many countries across Africa and Asia. We are very good at building toilets. We are much worse at managing fecal sludge and wastewater over time.
And then there is the part we almost never talk about: nutrients.
Human waste contains nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The same nutrients farmers buy as fertiliser. But instead of returning these nutrients to the soil, we mix them with water, chemicals, and everything else, and turn it into a toxic soup that is difficult and expensive to treat. We pollute rivers, groundwater, and oceans, and then we use large amounts of energy to produce artificial fertiliser somewhere else. From a system perspective, this makes very little sense.
So maybe the most important sanitation question is actually very simple:
Do nutrients go back to the soil, or do we dump them into rivers and oceans?
Sanitation is not just about toilets. – Sanitation is about health. – It is about water. – It is about agriculture. – It is about the environment. And it is about building systems that actually work, not just on inauguration day, but every day.
We need to stop thinking about sanitation as a construction project.
Sanitation is a service.
If the service works, the system works. If the service does not work, it does not matter how nice the toilet building is.
Then it is still just a chair with a hole.
And the real problem is still the sh*t.
