Prof. flush with passion for affordable toilets

POT LUCK: Providence College professor Stephen Mecca is studying how low-flow toilet valves could possibly be a tool to solve sanitation problems globally. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
POT LUCK: Providence College professor Stephen Mecca is studying how low-flow toilet valves could possibly be a tool to solve sanitation problems globally. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Teaching physics at Providence College is Stephen Mecca’s vocation. Teaching citizens in Africa how to bring the microflush valve he developed for toilets to scale globally for the poor through micro-franchising is his passion.
Three years ago, Mecca collaborated with Kweku Anno, managing director of Biofilcom, a company in Accra, Ghana, that manufactures toilets using technology developed to improve sanitation and hygiene.
Today, while Biofilcom is producing toilets using its own three-part system at $680 apiece, Anno says, Mecca – who respects that manufacturing model – is instead developing a micro-franchise distribution model that he says could spread the technology across Africa – not only in Ghana but in Zambia, Nigeria, Kenya and Malawi.
Mecca is working through his granddaughter Hannah Davis’ nonprofit, the Global Sustainable Aid Project, and trying to raise money through Rotary International clubs and other means to bring a toilet relying on his valve, which uses very little water compared to models in developed countries, to the poor, who cannot afford the manufactured price.
Anno told Providence Business News in a phone interview from Ghana he did not adapt Mecca’s invention for his company’s use, a claim Mecca disputes. The two have parted ways, but Biofilcom is selling as many as 1,000 of its toilets a year.
“Most people” can afford the toilets Biofilcom builds, Anno said, but he acknowledged that the “very, very poor” would have trouble paying for them. He has a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant for $960,000 to try and make the units more affordable for the poor, he said.
Mecca is targeting primarily the poorest of the poor for toilets built using his device, and the micro-franchising approach he hopes to implement could reduce the cost to under $300 per unit, he said.
“We believe we should be building toilets that should be affordable to the neediest of the needy,” Mecca said. “Instead of a factory-centric [business model], we’re training people to do this with local materials in their own community and in the process radically get the price down.”
Anno’s anaerobic digestion system uses organisms to break down human waste into compost, and has a special filter that helps oxygenate the waste so that there is almost no odor, he said. Anno says he never implemented Mecca’s microflush valve, which Mecca touts as inexpensive to build and extremely efficient because it uses so little water. A working toilet with Mecca’s microflush valve can be found at a farm on Eldred Avenue in Jamestown.
The way Mecca’s micro-franchising idea, which hasn’t yet been implemented, would work, he says, is that an investor, donor or philanthropist would invest in a micro-franchise owner, the entrepreneur toilet-maker. The entrepreneurs have to demonstrate that they are using those loans to build toilets, he said.
Next, those loans get paid back to the micro-franchise by the customer and the entrepreneur repays the investor, donor or philanthropist. The funds that get paid back can then be used to build the next micro-franchise, Mecca said.
“The hope is there will be thousands of small businesses created around the world with this model rather than one huge enterprise – all essentially with the same [elements], played out perhaps in different ways,” he said. “The paradigm here is a series of progressive, performance-based loans that get paid back and funds getting recycled into the next versions of the business.”
Mecca says there are about 100 toilet-makers across various countries in Africa who have been trained, and of those Samuel Gyabah is the only one in Ghana developing a business model using loans. It is not quite the micro-franchise process Mecca envisions, but it is a start, Mecca says.
Gyabah, 32, of Pokuase, is an entrepreneur Mecca taught to build the toilets. In a phone interview from Ghana, Gyabah explained how Mecca showed him how to build the toilets with less-expensive materials, take a down payment from his poorer customers, and have them repay the cost (up to about $300) over anywhere from a couple of months to two years.
In turn, Mecca said, Gyabah is teaching him approaches he hadn’t thought of. Africans in Ghana are used to the practice of paying ahead of schedule for something they want, very much like the American capitalist’s “layaway” plan, Gyabah told Mecca. This is an approach Mecca said he intends to explore.
Gyabah started his work in August 2013. By mid-July of this year, he was building 10 stalls each for four different schools, while also building 10 toilets for households that typically constitute two to three families. He is also training eight others to do what he’s doing, he said – and his household business has a waiting list. “The technology is simply the sanitation solution in Africa,” Gyabah said. “It’s just amazing. I’ve never in my life seen a toilet like this. No odor. No flies. Very economical. It’s a toilet I think every household will want to have and the market is growing day after day. People see the toilet and they want to have one. The main issue has to do with money. So doing this with a micro-franchise is the ideal business.”
The funding needed for the progressive, performance-based loans that micro-franchises would use need not be large, because it would become self-perpetuating, Mecca believes.
Of the $402,000 Rotary clubs in the U.S. and Canada have raised for Ghana since January, $153,035 is being spent on sanitation, said Walter Hughes, a Rotary district grants chairman for District 7570 in Rocky Mount, Va.
“We hope that most of that [sanitation] money is spent on micro-flush toilets,” Hughes said.
With some oversight on the ground from Rotary clubs and faith-based organizations, micro-franchises could scale up rapidly, Mecca believes.
While Mecca visits Ghana two to three times a year, his full-time job remains teaching at Providence College. He works with about 13 students in his “S-Lab” on a variety of projects, including the microflush valve and toilet. He tries to impart to students the importance of meaningful, practical, sustainable and affordable applications of technologies they develop together, he said.
“I hope in all of those students I’m working with some will emerge as the next generation thinking of applying their skills and talents to these kinds of problems,” he said.
“Students are never quite the same after working in that lab. They realize engineering and science [don’t] always deal with high-tech things. It’s more of a challenge to design something that works in the developing world than designing something that works here [in the U.S.],” he added.
The technologies made for developing countries have to last and be in expensive and that can be a challenge, he said.
At the same time, he said, he would like to see students learn about business models as well as the science.
“We should teach entrepreneurship when we’re working on problem-solving,” he said. “We should be thinking of the various elements of bringing it to market and to scale.” •

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