Japanese Company to Launch Ecological Waterless Toilet Project in Kenya

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LIXIL Corporation, a Japanese living and housing solutions company, announced on January 23, 2014, that the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) selected LIXIL's proposal to popularize an ecological waterless toilet system in Kenya for JICA's Collaboration Program with the Private Sector for Disseminating Japanese Technology, which aims to improve social and economic development in developing countries. LIXIL will implement the proposed project with the support of JICA.

LIXIL aims to popularize the sanitation system in non-urban areas in Kenya not only to reduce inappropriate human waste disposal and open defecation and to improve sanitation, but also to create jobs and use the fertilizer produced through the ecological sanitation system in agriculture.

Kenya's efforts to develop its infrastructure have not kept up with the sharp population increase and the concentration of the population in the cities, and consequently sewerage systems remain very rudimentary in non-urban areas. LIXIL has proposed an ecological waterless toilet system, and is taking every opportunity to promote the provision of clean and comfortable sanitation facilities in Kenya, including at the Fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD V) held in Yokohama in June 2013.

Since 2008, LIXIL has been researching and developing the safe treatment and recycling of human waste without using water. The company has conducted demonstration tests in Vietnam and Kamikatsu in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan, and since 2013, has conducted surveys in Indonesia.