Publication: Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation: Clean Team in Kumasi, Ghana
Loading...
Published
2019-02-14
ISSN
Date
2019-02-15
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This study is focused on Clean Team, a social enterprise providing container-based sanitation (CBS) services in Kumasi, the second-largest city in Ghana with a population of 2.7 million in 2018. Clean Team is owned by Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), a nonprofit partnership between the private sector, civil society, and academia. Clean Team delivers a single service: rental and regular servicing of in-house portable toilets, which includes transporting feces to a centralized treatment facility but not the processing and reuse of excreta. Customers find the Clean Team toilet appealing and Clean Team services are affordable compared to other alternatives. External subsidies, provided through public and philanthropic grant funding, have been necessary for Clean Team to cover its costs. Clean Team has been working, with support from funders and external advisers, on improving the efficiency of its services and reducing costs. Going forward, Clean Team could benefit from a clearer policy environment, which would allow them to increase the scale of their operations based on a more cost-efficient business model.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2019. Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation: Clean Team in Kumasi, Ghana. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31294 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14)This case study examines the container-based sanitation (CBS) service provided by Sanergy and how its business model fits overall in Nairobi as well as specifically in informal settlements there. Sanergy’s basic business concept is to provide safe sanitation to low-income residents of informal settlements in Nairobi and to create a sustainable value chain that converts feces into premium reuse products for agriculture. Sanergy provides single-cubicle, branded Fresh Life Toilets (FLTs) to franchisees for a fee and collects the excreta from the toilets on a frequent basis (daily or every two or three days). Satisfaction expressed by customers with Sanergy’s toilets was high and users of Sanergy’s toilets are paying much the same rates as they would for other toilet options. Overall, the FLT operation shows promise to provide a highly cost-effective sanitation solution at scale and the evolving policy landscape and significant investment by Sanergy and others has radically changed the status of CBS in a short time. Sanergy plans to scale significantly to serve as many as 500,000 people in its existing areas of operation, an ambitious expansion plan that will warrant further study and monitoring.Publication Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14)This study focuses on Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization (NGO), and its operations mostly in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, and to a lesser extent in Port-au-Prince. SOIL, through its container-based program known as EkoLakay, operates mainly in the eastern part of Cap-Haitien in low-income areas characterized by a high population density, irregular alley layout, and higher exposure to floods (compared to the rest of the city). SOIL provides full-cycle ecological sanitation, where excreta is treated and transformed into compost, benefiting agricultural projects and development. SOIL is the only service provider in Cap-Haitien (and in Haiti at large) able to manage a sanitation system that covers the whole sanitation service chain, and customers expressed satisfaction with the toilet technology. While affordability is a key issue for customers and non-customers, the user fee is unlikely to cover all costs of the sanitation service, which includes excreta treatment and transformation. SOIL intends to transfer implementation and scale-up of its CBS business models to the public and private sectors in Haiti, making replicability and scalability key for their business model. To meet its ambitious target number of customers in Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince, SOIL will need to continue to influence the institutional environment, along with other organizations and donors in the sector.Publication Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14)This case study examines the container-based sanitation (CBS) service provided by x-runner in the low-income formal/informal settlements in peri-urban Lima. x-runner provides a safe sanitation chain in poor nonsewered neighborhoods in the hills of the outskirts of southwest Lima for a population that does not have (and probably will not have for some years) any safe or hygienic alternative. x-runner operates in difficult-to-access areas, sometimes relying on lockers for users to drop off their sealed full containers. The company is leveraging the capacities of its suppliers to reduce the complexity of its business to a manageable level and the number of customers has been growing steadily, with an average of around 24 new households per month. Although some customers expressed the view that the price for the service is high, they appear to be willing to pay it and the level of satisfaction with the service for x-runner customers is high. Going forward, an explicit recognition of CBS—or a category into which CBS clearly falls—as a viable sanitation system for the urban poor, would be an important factor for enabling public sector support.Publication Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14)In the face of urbanization, alternative approaches are needed to deliver adequate and inclusive sanitation services across the full sanitation service chain. Container-based sanitation (CBS) consists of an end-to-end service—that is, one provided along the whole sanitation service chain—that collects excreta hygienically from toilets designed with sealable, removable containers and strives to ensure that the excreta is safely treated, disposed of, and reused. This report builds on four case studies (SOIL – Haiti, x-runner – Peru, Clean Team – Ghana, Sanergy – Kenya) to assess the role CBS can play in a portfolio of solutions for citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) services. The authors conclude that CBS approaches should be part of the CWIS portfolio of solutions, especially for poor urban populations for whom alternative on-site or sewer-based sanitation services might not be appropriate. Customer satisfaction with existing services is high and services provided by existing CBS providers are considered safe but have some areas for improvement. While the proportion of total CBS service costs covered by revenues is still small, CBS services are considered to be priced similarly to the main sanitation alternatives in their service areas. Recommendations include adopting a conducive policy and regulatory environment and exploring ways to ensure that CBS services are sustainably financed. The report also identifies areas for further analysis.Publication East Asia and the Pacific Region Urban Sanitation Review : Philippines Country Study(Washington, DC, 2013-12)This Philippines country study forms part of the East Asia and the Pacific region urban sanitation review that focuses on three of the emerging middle income countries of East Asia: Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam. The regional review aims to develop a strategic framework to help guide national urban sanitation programs and their implementation in these emerging middle income countries. This country study contributed to the regional review by providing important information on sector operations in the Philippines. The development of urban sanitation in the Philippines needs to be considered in the context of the different situations in Metro Manila and the other parts of the country. The case studies for some urban areas were prepared to see how sanitation operations are carried out in the Philippines and a consultative workshop was held on February 19, 2013 in Manila. The findings of the Philippines country study are briefly presented which complements the findings of the regional report.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2009(World Bank, 2009)Places do well when they promote transformations along the dimensions of economic geography: higher densities as cities grow; shorter distances as workers and businesses migrate closer to density; and fewer divisions as nations lower their economic borders and enter world markets to take advantage of scale and trade in specialized products. World Development Report 2009 concludes that the transformations along these three dimensions density, distance, and division are essential for development and should be encouraged. The conclusion is controversial. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. A billion people live in lagging areas of developing nations, remote from globalizations many benefits. And poverty and high mortality persist among the world’s bottom billion, trapped without access to global markets, even as others grow more prosperous and live ever longer lives. Concern for these three intersecting billions often comes with the prescription that growth must be spatially balanced. This report has a different message: economic growth will be unbalanced. To try to spread it out is to discourage it to fight prosperity, not poverty. But development can still be inclusive, even for people who start their lives distant from dense economic activity. For growth to be rapid and shared, governments must promote economic integration, the pivotal concept, as this report argues, in the policy debates on urbanization, territorial development, and regional integration. Instead, all three debates overemphasize place-based interventions. Reshaping Economic Geography reframes these debates to include all the instruments of integration spatially blind institutions, spatially connective infrastructure, and spatially targeted interventions. By calibrating the blend of these instruments, today’s developers can reshape their economic geography. If they do this well, their growth will still be unbalanced, but their development will be inclusive.Publication Recipe for a Livable Planet(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-20)The global agrifood system has been largely overlooked in the fight against climate change. Yet, greenhouse gas emissions from the agrifood system are so big that they alone could cause the world to miss the goal of keeping global average temperatures from rising above 1.5 centigrade compared to preindustrial levels. Greenhouse gas emissions from agrifood must be cut to net zero by 2050 to achieve this goal. Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System offers the first comprehensive global strategic framework to mitigate the agrifood system’s contributions to climate change, detailing affordable and readily available measures that can cut nearly a third of the world’s planet heating emissions while ensuring global food security. These actions, which are urgently needed, offer three additional benefits: improving food supply reliability, strengthening the global food system’s resilience to climate change, and safeguarding vulnerable populations. This practical guide outlines global actions and specific steps that countries at all income levels can take starting now, focusing on six key areas: investments, incentives, information, innovation, institutions, and inclusion. Calling for collaboration among governments, businesses, citizens, and international organizations, it maps a pathway to making agrifood a significant contributor to addressing climate change and healing the planet.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Returns to Investment in Education(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-04)Returns to investment in education based on human capital theory have been estimated systematically since the 1950s. In the 60-plus year history of such estimates, there have been several compilations in the literature. This paper reviews and highlights the latest trends and patterns based on a database of 1,120 estimates in 139 countries. The review shows that the private average global rate of return to one extra year of schooling is about 9 percent a year and very stable over decades. Private returns to higher education have increased over time, raising issues of financing and equity. Social returns to schooling remain high, above 10 percent at the secondary and higher education levels. Women continue to experience higher average rates of return to schooling, showing that girls' education remains a priority. Returns are higher in low-income countries. Those employed in the private sector of the economy enjoy higher returns than those in the public sector, lending support to the productive value of education.Publication Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14)This case study examines the container-based sanitation (CBS) service provided by Sanergy and how its business model fits overall in Nairobi as well as specifically in informal settlements there. Sanergy’s basic business concept is to provide safe sanitation to low-income residents of informal settlements in Nairobi and to create a sustainable value chain that converts feces into premium reuse products for agriculture. Sanergy provides single-cubicle, branded Fresh Life Toilets (FLTs) to franchisees for a fee and collects the excreta from the toilets on a frequent basis (daily or every two or three days). Satisfaction expressed by customers with Sanergy’s toilets was high and users of Sanergy’s toilets are paying much the same rates as they would for other toilet options. Overall, the FLT operation shows promise to provide a highly cost-effective sanitation solution at scale and the evolving policy landscape and significant investment by Sanergy and others has radically changed the status of CBS in a short time. Sanergy plans to scale significantly to serve as many as 500,000 people in its existing areas of operation, an ambitious expansion plan that will warrant further study and monitoring.