ADDWATER PROGRAM AND SERVICE DEVELOPMENT
Bangalore, India
In a rapidly growing country of more than a billion people, water shortages are already a large concern both politically and socially. 60 percent of all households in India have no access to clean water and roughly 65 percent of have no indoor toilet. This situation will only be acerbated by the massive rural-urban migration that is currently occurring - adding roughly 200 million more people into cities by 2025. This explosion of urban areas means that the current population of 93 million people in slums across India is set to grow just as rapidly, if not more. This weakest section of the population is also the most vulnerable to water shortages and all the problems that such lack is rife with. Due to the poor state of infrastructure in these areas, there is often little water even for daily consumption let alone personal hygiene. This means that the communal toilets these communities greatly depend on, are the first to suffer; Surveys cited by the World Bank in 2003 showed that 80% of public sanitation facilities in Mumbai were non-functioning.(1) This is directly be attributed to the lack of water for functioning and maintenance of the toilet blocks. This problem leads to greatly increased rates of disease which in turn results in lost wages and lowered school attendance. This is especially true for young women.
Using Bangalore as a case study and testing ground, TYTHEdesign has developed a business model that provides water to public toilets as well as a stream of income for regular maintenance of the facilities and other community projects for empowerment. Currently, the Bangalore Water and Sewerage Board supplies 900 million liters of water per day, but the demand of the city exceeds 1.3 billion liters. With an annual rainfall of almost 900mm the plan includes the integration of a rainwater collection system retrofitted to work with current architectural conditions of public toilet facilities. This follows suite with the new Master Plan 2015 of Bangalore with mandates the use of rainwater harvesting in all sites of greater than 240 sqm.
The project aims to achieve a two tiered effect on the communities in need:
1.The collection and storage of enough water to allow the functioning of the
communal toilets of slums for most of the year.
2.The empowerment of the slum through educational and economic models
derived from the physical systems involved in this process of rain water
collection.
This second tier is what makes the system truly a sustainable model – one that can self-replenish not only in terms of resources but also economically.
With this business model, TYTHEdesign is focusing on providing solutions that follow the UN Millennium Development Goals. In particular ADDwater addresses Goal 7d - Ensuring Environmental Sustainability; Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020 (2).
Currently, we are working with contacts in Bangalore, India and looking for funding to develop the proof of concept. As well, we are a competitor in the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
If you are interested in learning more about the project or might be able to help us with funding, please contact us at: info@tythe-design.com
(1) World Bank. “Reaching the Poor through Sustainable Partnerships: The Slum Sanitation Program in Mumbai, India“ (http://www.archidev.org/IMG/pdf/The_Slum_Sanitation_Program_in_Mumbai_India.pdf)
(2) “United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals” 2008: UN
