Clean Team Toilet

The following outlines the design of their waste management service:
To receive a toilet, the user must sign up for a collection plan (vs. purchasing the actual toilet). New customers pay a one-time 15 GHS (roughly $4). The collection plan costs $9/month for basic collection and cleaning.^{Interview with representative}

Pick-ups are 2-4 times a week on certain days, depending on family size. The person collecting will pick up the “cartridge” (a removable plastic bucket where the waste drops), puts a lid on it, and then puts it in a hand pushed trolly. A full trolly is transported to a local central location, and then a truck takes the waste to a processing plant. Once at their central processing facility, they transport the waste to a separate municipal treatment site, the Dompoase Metropolitan Waste Treatment Facility, which reduces BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) by 70-80% through a series of waste stabilization ponds (WSPs). Their plan for scale is to use financially viable methods to convert the waste into energy and organic fertiliser to sell to commercial farms in the region. However, Clean Team does not yet process the waste into energy or fertilizer. To date, the municipal waste treatment facility discharges the treated wastewater into the river.

The actual toilets costs approximately $91.

Toilet type: urine-diverting dry toilet (UDDT)

Clean Team rents households a branded portable toilet and collect the waste 2-3 times per week.

Service providers recover any toilets that are defective or at end-of-life.

Performance was evaluated as part of a Civil and Environmental Engineering Master’s Thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled Evaluation of Innovative Decentralized Sanitation Technologies in Ghana. The evaluation recommended that for large projects in densely populated areas, the Clean Team Toilet was the best choice if a reuse for waste and safe disposal of biocide can be established.

Safe handling of waste material requires protective clothing, as the biocide chemicals used to clean toilets present serious health and environmental concerns.

Safety guidance for toilet users.