Green Latrine

Green Latrine shall make access to improve toilet facility available and affordable for millions of people living in slums and rural areas in Nigeria.

With $15 USD (NGN3,500) charged each month for evacuation and latrine setup fee $150 USD (NGN55,000) constructed from materials sought locally, 300,000 slum dwellers will have access to improved toilets facilities. 

At least 3000+ women from the same area will be gainfully employed earning at least $70 USD (NGN25,000) per month serving as our agents and another 300+ employed directly by us within 2 years of commencement.

There are over 70 million people in Nigeria without access to improved sanitation and more than 45 million people practicing open defecation in Nigeria. 

Another 56 million people are estimated to be added during the next ten years. This means a total of 102 million people or 20 million households should have access to a toilet and use it. According to a World Bank Report (2012), around 122,000 Nigerians including 87,000 children under 5 die each year from diarrhea; nearly 90% is directly attributed to water, sanitation and hygiene. Source: National Roadmap for the Elimination of Open Defecation in Nigeria.

We are solving the problem of lack of access to improved toilet facilities.

We shall be serving the over 120 million rural and slum dwellers in Nigeria.

My team and me have lived in slums of Port Harcourt for over 30 years of of our individual lives. Throughout this period, the only source of toilet are either a free to use but unhygienic public latrine by the river or a privately built but paid public toilet also by the river. This means that feces are directly dumped into the same water we fish from and children play in. 

Each time I use any of the latrines, I have this feeling of "this has to be improved upon." It wasn't until recently, my aha moment came when the idea of a locally built private or pay-to-use mobile toilet that seals feces each time a button is pressed after use. These feces will within 48 hours be evacuated and dumped at government approved wasted dumps. We are taking a look at converting these waste to biogass before the end of our second year.

We shall:

1. Source for materials locally to build mobile toilets.

2. Partner with local firms to produce biodegradable reusable bags to store the wastes.

3. Set up toilets for local women to manage who pay the full cost of latrine overtime

4. Evacuate the content of the toilet at most every 48 hours and keep the toilet clean.

5. Employ 300 people 70% of which shall be women as evacuators, supervisors and drivers for the 6000 latrines we project to setup within 2 years in operation.

The conventional toilet facilities available to the people of the slums are a private pour-flush system available to 1 in every 20 slum dwellers, the public paid per-use pour-flush and the free to use pit or public toilet open to the general public. Every human waste from all of these systems are channeled to the river.

Green Latrine solution besides creating employment for over 3000 plus slum dwellers is innovative because:

1. Households and compounds can now own a private or semi-private toilet.
2. Wastes will no longer be dumped in the river.
3. The use of reusable biodegradable materials to collect wastes will help protect the environment.

Because of the risk involve in children using these public toilet facilities, the greater percentage of children poop in plastic bags which are equally tossed into the river. We all know the adverse effect of these plastic bags to our environment.

To help protect the environment, Green Latrine shall collect feces in reusable biodegradable bags. 

1. Affordability. In the slums is where you find the poorest set of people living in urban areas in Nigeria. Currently, each use of the paid public toilet in the slums we researched is about $0.055 USD (20 NGN) and we will be charging about the same rate per use and a monthly service fee og about $15 (3,500 NGN) for the private latrines.

2. Accessibility. Our solution shall be installed just beside the houses of the people we serve for private latrines and at a pacel of land provided by our agents for the public latrines. This will reduce the risk of assault to women and girls who go to toilet by the river late at night.
3. Hygiene. Our evacuators shall clean the toilets at most every 48 hours using disinfectants and other cleaning materials.
4. Employment Opportunity. At least 3000+ women shall be engaged as agents. 90% of our staff shall be from the same locality where we serve of which 70% shall be women.
5. Improve Health. Our solution shall reduce the incident of dumping of human waste in the rivers. This will therefore reduce human contact with feces and in turn reduce the number of children who die due to diarrhea and other waterborne diseases.
6. Environment-Friendly. The use of biodegradable materials shall reduce the use of plastic bags in the areas we serve.

We are currently serving 0 number of people as our solution is in its concept stage.

In one year from start, we project to serve 101,500 people.

In five years, we will be serving 2,580,000 people.

One year from start, we project to set up 2,000 public latrines each serving an average of 50 people and 300 private latrines each serving an average of 5 people. 

We project to extend our solution on a 100% scale year-on-year for the nest building 60,000 public latrines and 4,500 private latrines in another four years.

There are 3 barriers

1. High cost of locally made biodegradable bags. 
2. High cost of locally made Fibre Reinforced Products (FRP) for the mobile toilets. 
3. Perception of people to evacuating feces during the day time. 

1. We shall import them from India where we found it more cost effective.

2. We will enter in bulk-purchase agreement with local manufacturers, while we work at setting up our production plant within 5 years.

3. We shall be evacuating in the early hours of the morning before daybreak, hold sensitization programmes and we also hope that when the number of people empowered by our solution increase such that many households have a family member who earns a living from our solution, this perception will change.

We are a team of three. 

We plan to engage 300 plus as full-time staffs within five years in operation.

By using the agent approach, 3000 plus women and youths will be empowered to manage public latrines.

Besides the passion to help solve the myriad of problems we face in the slums, all members of our team grew up in slums and rural areas. We understand exactly what people in these areas go through. 

 Ayebaye Daniel Wanatoi
 Ayebaye has a Bachelor of Technology from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology (2003-2008). He has worked with the Office of the President on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), where he served as an Enumerator and a Data Collector and took part in many community service initiatives and helped address issues of sanitation, water availability and market space hygiene. 
 
 Dr. Elijah, Ekene Randolph
 Dr. Randolph has over 6 years of experience in General Medicine. He has certifications in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) from the Global Health, USAID and John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Environmental, Health and Safety Certifications (BEAC) from the British International Safety Organisation, and Public Health Principles in Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response. 
 
 Ezekiel Ntesat
 Ezekiel is currently the CEO of Niti Resources, a web design company. He has over 10 years experience in the startup ecosystem. He is also a motivational speaker, an author and a publisher. His leadership experience spans over two decades starting from being the secretary of a community youth body in 1998, a secretary, VP and later president of a religious youth body of over 300 membership from 2003 – 2008 and a Sunday school teacher for 13 years.

We have not established any partnership yet. We shall be needing support from Fibre Reinforced Product and Biodegradable bags manufacturers locally and from India

Our value proposition is AFFORDABLE ACCESS TO IMPROVED TOILET FACILITIES and our customer segments are slum and rural dwellers. We plan to reach them through, www.greenlatrine.com.ng, community heads, health enlightenment programmes and local radio stations. We shall partner with community health NGOs, environmental and health professionals, biodegradable bags manufacturers and Fibre Reinforced Product manufacturers.

Our trademark, brand, website and evacuation trucks are our key resources, while feces evacuation, toilet cleaning and health enlightenment programmes are our key activities. Cost structure include latrines, trucks and staff and our revenue streams are latrine setup, evacuation fee, equity funding and grant.

We shall operate as a hybrid of Not-for-Profit and for-profit. Our financial sustainability shall come from grants, donations, latrine set up, evacuation fee as well as raising investment capital.

We are applying to solve to raise the need funding to develop our product and to acquire key startup resources.

The original intention of our solution falls within this prize. If given this prize, we shall reach more communities by extending our solution to Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Abia States.

Of the 3,000 plus rural and slum dwellers who shall be empowered economically, 70% shall be women. Each shall earn at least $70 per month. At an average of $2.3 USD per day, these women most of whom are among the over 90 million extremely poor persons in Nigeria will be lifted above the poverty line. 

The Innovation for Women Prize will enable us reach more communities and do so faster hence the increase in the number of women empowered economically.