Shri's Bihar toilets pay for their own upkeep by turning waste into bottled water

In a BBC report from November 2017, Aamir Rafiq Peerzeda describes Shri, short for Sanitation and Health Rights in India, a social enterprise building community toilets in Bihar. Founders Prabin Kumar and Chandan Kumar met Canadian-born engineer Anoop Jain in 2010. The BBC notes that many state-run toilets have had problems clearing waste and paying for upkeep.

Shri's toilets do not rely on clearing the waste. They channel it into a biodigester, which provides electricity that powers a pump for groundwater. The water is filtered at the facility, bottled and sold for half a rupee (about one penny) a litre. That income pays for maintenance, while the toilets stay free for the community.

The first facility opened in 2014 in Nemua village in Bihar's Supaul district, with eight toilets for men and eight for women, open from four in the morning to ten at night. The founders say they build only where there is no government facility and run an awareness campaign first, because barriers are cultural as well as a lack of facilities.

Make the toilet's own waste power a water business that pays the toilet's running costs.

The biodigester makes the waste useful on site instead of leaving it as a clearing cost.

Electricity from the waste removes the pump's power bill.

Filtered water has a ready market in villages, so the income recurs daily.

Free toilets get used, and a pre-build awareness campaign tackles cultural barriers.

When a free public service fails on upkeep, look for a byproduct of the service that can fund it, rather than asking users or the state to pay.

The BBC reports Shri had built toilets in five villages, each used around 800 times a day, and sold 3,000 litres of filtered water a day. Each facility costs about 30,000 dollars to build and, the founders say, pays for itself once running. Unicef India's Nicolas Osbert called the idea interesting but wondered whether the biodigester could limit large-scale expansion. The founders planned to work with the government to scale.