Winnipegger's latrines help poor go where no one has gone before

via Khmer NZ News Media

By: Kevin Rollason
30/06/2010

IDE Canada produces latrines for the poor in Cambodia and has won best-in-show at IDEA, the International Design Excellence Awards program. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

CAMBODIANS living in rural areas without toilets can now buy a cheap and efficient latrine -- thanks to Winnipeggers.

Not only is Winnipeg native Cordell Jacks quickly becoming the latrine king in the Asian country, the development organization pushing it -- IDE (International Development Enterprises) Canada, co-founded by local businessman Art DeFehr -- just won a prestigious international award for the latrine.

Stuart Taylor, IDE Canada's executive director, admits that, yes, they are flush with success.

"We're not inventing something from scratch," Taylor said on Tuesday. "We're scaling it down to the customers we deal with."

Jacks, in a statement, said "it's really changed how simply people can install a latrine.

"They can do it themselves now."

Called the Easy Latrine and designed for IDE by a designer on sabbatical, it consists of a concrete box under a toilet, a length of pipe and three concrete rings stacked on each other to create a holding pit. It can be installed in a day. The latrine costs $25 and holds a year's worth of a family's excrement.

When it is full, the pipe can be diverted to another stacked pit which is purchased for about $10 and by the time that one is full, the original one has composted and its contents can be spread on agricultural fields.

More than 3,000 have been sold already. The design won best in show at the IDEA, International Design Excellence Awards program.

It's a far cry from the US$150 latrines for sale in Cambodia. That price puts them out of reach for most of the country's poor rural people.

Taylor said without the latrines, the population is forced to do their business in the great outdoors, which encourages water-borne diseases that kill more people than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

"There's no question that with the latrines, you see a drop in disease," he said.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca