From bricks and animal feed to fertilizers and electricity, Africa is showing how body waste can be profitable. Esther Munyiva, a landlady in Nairobi’s Mukuru Kwa Reuben informal settlement, installed her first Fresh Life toilet in 2012. “Before Fresh Life, my neighborhood was so bad,” she says. Plastic bags of feces littered rooftops, trenches and pathways and the air reeked of excrement. Even the rivers flowed brown. The waste collected by Fresh Life toilets is turned into fertilizers and animal feed by the company which services them. Munyiva now has four such toilets which provide more than 20 rental households with safe sanitation, day and night. Munviya is one of millions of Africans benefiting from a quiet revolution in approaches to sanitation. |