Essentially what you have at the bottom of the pit is a big compost heap. The bacteria already present will cook the fecal matter down, reducing its volume and its smell. This natural process is what allows the pits to last for years before they need to be drained. It doesn’t need help, and it certainly doesn’t need inorganic objects getting in the way and interfering with the biological cook, and potentially clogging the hose that’s used to drain it.

Even with the best of intentions, adding something other than waste is a bad idea. Bleach and other cleaning chemicals will kill the bacteria doing the cooking, ultimately delaying the reduction of volume and making the latrine’s smell worse for longer. Even water will make it so the waste can’t decompose properly. A waterless toilet is great for communities where water is scarce, yet people continue to clean the bowls of their latrines by pouring in water because they don’t know any better. Thousands of schools in South Africa own installations by Enviro Loo, a company that manufactures waste collection tanks designed to be environmentally friendly and easy to maintain. These tanks come with instructions to use a special enzyme instead of water or chemicals for cleaning. But, not everyone reads these instructions.

If the environmental impact of a pit latrine used properly is so small, and if proper maintenance is so easy, sometimes I wonder why they haven’t taken off in the developed world like composting food waste has done. Despite the savings in water (something you don’t think about much until you can’t get access to water) the sheer convenience of being able to “walk to privies in the rain and never wet your feet”, as Oklahoma puts it, can’t be beat.

Other times, when I see the ceramic remnants of broken sinks and bathtubs, I wonder why my village exclusively uses pit latrines when it wouldn’t be that hard to set up running water for a household. But, as anyone who works with technology in Africa can tell you, when things get broken there’s no one to repair them. The beauty of the pit latrine is that there are no moving parts, so there’s nothing to break. Things can’t go wrong.

And yet things do go wrong. Most schools have two types of pit latrines on the property: modern, improved brick structures for the teachers, and ancient dilapidated stalls that are used by students if the school hasn’t already retired them in favor of newer structures. The older toilets consist of rows of cubicle-style stalls with the doors fallen off, if indeed there ever were doors. Everyone deserves the privacy afforded by a door, and women in particular require it. Embarrassing toilet setups are an affront to dignity, but South Africans can tolerate these things with enviable serenity. The misplaced apathy towards undignified satiation is one reason that initiatives such as those funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation must devote energy to increasing the demand for sanitation, not just the supply of it.

Zach Gershkoff

Sometimes increasing demand involves something as simple and as low-tech as installing a door to a doorway. The metal door of my host family’s pit latrine has twice fallen off its hinges, so the door and frame were punctured and fastened with wire on the opposite side, and then again when the wire tore through the holes. As a result, the door never closes all the way. It’s actually kind of nice, because I can get a view overlooking the families’ corn field and a distant road while sitting inside.