May 2024 Developing formal pit-latrine emptying businesses for hard-to-serve customers: resources, methods, and pricing structures Bruce Rutayisire, Jonathan Wilcox
Forever Sanitation’s barrels used to carry fecal sludge in low-income areas, are being loaded in the truck for transportation to the treatment plant in Kampala (© Forever Sanitation)
This study compares pit-latrine emptying businesses in Kampala, Uganda, and Kigali, Rwanda, focusing on resources, methods, and tariffs. Empirical data from Forever Sanitation and Pit Vidura show challenges with portable vacuum pumps in hard-to-reach areas, highlighting the need for formal manual emptying for some customers where mechanical methods are not viable. Manual emptying has similar duration to using a portable pump because of the additional time to set up, pack, and clean equipment. Higher regulatory standards can exclude households from using formal services. The study highlights the role of government in managing the tensions between affordability, formalization, and increasing coverage.
In the sanitation sector, innovation and knowledge sharing are crucial for achieving SDG 6.2. In this article, Bruce Rutayisire, a Research and Development at Pit Vidura, and Jonathan Wilcox, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Leeds, UK, sheds light on significant challenges and opportunities within fecal sludge collection and transportation services, particularly in inaccessible urban areas. Their insights reveal significant findings from their collaborative research.
What motivated this study?
Bruce
Pit Vidura is a social enterprise focused on providing safe, and hygienic fecal sludge collection and transportation management services to low-income households living in hard-to-reach urban areas. As a 'live lab,' Pit Vidura tracks every aspect of our work, from educating the community about the services to tracking individual pit emptying task durations, truck movement patterns, and other general waste collection logistics to improve service delivery. The solutions we develop are data-driven and tested in a real-world operational setting. As we are not the only ones trying to solve this issue, we decided to initiate a collaboration with a sanitation service provider in Kampala, Uganda to exchange best practices and experiences.
Jonathan
Several cities in the region have begun to formalize emptying services for low-income communities. This presents a unique opportunity for researchers to examine and analyze the data generated by these services to understand how services can be improved and extended. The data collected by Bruce and John Businge (Forever Sanitation, Kampala) allowed us to compare two established service providers operating in different contexts.
Why do you argue in the paper that manual emptying services have a role in increasing coverage of safely managed services whilst they are often considered unsafe, unhygienic, and sometimes even illegal?
Bruce
In Rwanda, regulations require us to use mechanical methods for pit latrine emptying, and in the last few years, we have successfully used a portable vacuum pump (the PitVaq) for customers unreachable by small exhauster trucks. However, the setup, cleaning, and packing time for these pumps make them economically impractical for small volumes of sludge. Additionally, sludge thickness and depth further complicate their use. Consequently, we are unable to serve customers for whom mechanical emptying is unsuitable or who cannot afford our minimum price.
Pit emptiers using portable vacuum pumps in hard-to-reach areas in Rwanda (© Pit Vidura)
Jonathan
Although manual emptying is not an acceptable method in Kampala, many formal service providers are using what we refer to as improved manual methods to empty latrines inaccessible to small exhauster trucks. These methods are probably safer and more hygienic than typical informal emptying (for the household, emptier, and community) but probably not as hygienic as mechanical emptying with an exhauster truck or semi-mechanical emptying using a Pitvaq or a Gulper. We suggest that there is a segment of customers who, unable to utilize mechanical methods, could benefit from these improved manual methods rather than resorting to unsafe, informal practices.
You highlight the tension between affordability, formalizing services, and increasing coverage. How does this impact service providers?
Jonathan
Some cities in the region have exhauster truck businesses emptying pit latrines and transporting sludge to treatment or disposal. This system suits customers (households and institutions) who can afford to pay for services, have an incentive to use a licensed service provider, and where a suitable disposal point is available. But this doesn’t work for all households, creating a market for informal emptying services. In many cases, offering safe and profitable emptying and transport services is challenging for service providers.
Bruce
We recognize this issue in the region, particularly in Kigali. As a social enterprise, we use a cross-subsidy model where revenue from institutional and high-volume household customers helps cover the costs of serving low-income households. This approach has allowed Pit Vidura to keep low-income prices affordable despite the high costs of serving these inaccessible areas, fuel price increases, and inflation. We have also received grant funding to cover indirect costs related to the call center, marketing efforts, and R&D initiatives for refining our cross-subsidy model such that we can cover all operating expenses, and create profits which we shall, in turn, invest in making the emptying services to low-income households more affordable.
In Kigali's informal settlements, there are no other formal service providers because it is not a good market for them. Also, in more accessible areas, we face competition from providers who target the most profitable customers, adding to our challenges.
What suggestions do you have for public institutions to manage this tension?
Bruce
As our service has grown we have started to talk more with the city authorities and recently we formed an emptiers’ association with other exhauster truck businesses in Kigali. Our recent learning is that city authorities perceive us as typical businesses rather than public service providers. This makes it difficult to discuss what can be done to improve the enabling environment, because the perception is that it will increase our profits, rather than meaning that more people can access safe services.
Female and male sanitation workers using exhauster truck in Kampala, contributing towards safely managed sanitation services (© Pit Vidura)
Jonathan
City authorities have a big challenge with sanitation. It is often a low political priority, budgets are small if separate from water supply, and human capacity across the private and public sectors is limited. The SFD is an effective tool for public institutions to assess their city's sanitation landscape. The next step is to think about how regulation and enforcement enable or prevent households from using formal services and that a large proportion of households cannot use formal services, so can’t be part of safely managed sanitation. Cities have various options on both the demand and supply sides; some implemented strategies include: supporting households to improve latrines so they are easier and cheaper to empty; leasing expensive equipment and vehicles to service providers to reduce their investment risk; or enabling service providers to operate efficiently by giving them pipelines of work from scheduled desludging.
What are the most significant challenges for service providers trying to increase coverage, especially in hard-to-reach areas?
Jonathan
The obvious answer is that households with limited budgets are often not profitable customers for formal emptying services, which are logistically complex and sometimes not feasible to provide. Additionally, formal services must compete with informal ones that do not incur the extra costs of formalization, such as transporting sludge, using safety equipment, licensing, and paying taxes. So probably the biggest challenge for formal service providers is how to market their service to households when the alternative provides similar benefits for the customer and is much cheaper.
Bruce
One challenge that might not be immediately obvious is purchasing exhauster trucks. We must import vehicles in Rwanda so our options are limited to second-hand trucks from Europe and Dubai or brand new trucks from China. Firstly, securing funding for trucks is often difficult for many sanitation startups, as it typically involves obtaining bank loans. Secondly, importing trucks takes three to six months, creating a gap between when we would start servicing the loan and when the vehicle starts generating revenue for the business.
What are you working on now?
Jonathan
After our comparative study between Pit Vidura and Forever Sanitation, I began analyzing Pit Vidura's cross-subsidy model in Kigali across various emptying services and considering its potential citywide application. Recently, Rwanda's utility and regulator announced plans to introduce a sanitation surcharge on water bills to fund these services. Our research could support this initiative.
Bruce
Currently, we are focused on expanding our business and increasing its impact by using our cross-subsidy model and clustering emptying requests in neighborhoods to lower costs. As we expand, we plan to extend this model to support more low-income households, keeping our services affordable without raising prices. We are also actively seeking and establishing partnerships in cities like Kampala, Lusaka, and Kisumu.
To learn more about the findings of this study, please check out our paper:
Acknowledgments: This project was made possible through a research grant from the New Venture Fund for the Global Policy and Advocacy project, under Grant No: NVF-NGDF-PIT16-Subgrant-016985-2022-02-01. This work was also supported by the UKRI Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) through a Ph.D. studentship received by JW as part of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Water and Waste Infrastructure and Services Engineered for Resilience (Water-WISER). EPSRC Grant No.: EP/S022066/1.
This article was authored by Bruce Rutayisire, the Research and Development Manager at Pit Vidura, and Jonathan Wilcox, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Leeds, UK. For inquiries about this work, please contact them at bruce@pitvidura.com and/or cnjdtw@leeds.ac.uk