Case Study: Impact of Installing Bio-toilets on School Children in India
Banka BioLoo installs bio-toilets in rural areas and schools that reduce diseases and help keep girls in school.
July 17, 2020 /3BL Media/ - In India, almost 50 million people lack access to adequate sanitation, thereby increasing risks of water contamination leading to diseases. In 2017, the country still had the highest number of people practising open defecation in the world.
This lack of access to adequate sanitation not only affects health, with diarrhoea being responsible for 13 percent of all deaths under the age of five, but it also affects the education of children, particularly girls. Limited access to sanitation is one of the main reasons 113 million female students drop out of school when they reach puberty.
Social enterprise Banka BioLoo produces environmentally friendly bio-toilets, installing them in remote areas where it is difficult to construct conventional toilets. Their bio-digester technology makes it possible for users of the bio-toilets to manage waste on-site and reduce dependency on resource-consuming sewage infrastructure.
Over the last eight years, this enterprise has installed over 10,000 bio-toilets, called bioloos, across 22 states in India – contributing to a reduction in waterborne diseases, as well as increased educational opportunities for girls by placing bio-toilets in schools across the country.
Banka BioLoo, as an inclusive business member company of Business Call to Action (BCtA), was interested in gathering concrete data to prove the social and environmental impact it was having on the communities it operates in through BCtA’s Impact Lab.
The Impact Lab provides an end-to-end impact management solution for inclusive businesses. The Impact Lab helps companies develop Sustainable Development Goals-focused impact framework for data collection, analysis and reporting, and is designed to help companies drive business value while delivering impact by understanding, proving, and improving their contributions to the SDGs.
Selected BCtA member companies partake in the Impact Champions Programme to undertake impact measurement and management with an SDGs lens, where they are provided with training, hands-on support and technical assistance from BCtA.
As an Impact Champion, Banka BioLoo developed an SDG impact framework and collected data from their clients to understand their needs, design an effective product and strengthen their social and environmental impact.
Banka BioLoo surveyed 57 girls and 57 boys across schools in Alwar district of Rajasthan, a state in northern India, over three months. Though tracking behaviour change is a long-term process, the bioloos installed by the company have already shown potential for impacting the education of children as attendance rates increased by 6 percent since they were installed. The bioloos have proved to be an extremely valuable service for students and schools, as both ranked five out of five all the parameters surveyed on the bioloos. Moreover, 97 percent of boys and 88 percent of girls reported that using a bioloo remarkably improved their security and wellbeing. The evidence generated in this study with the support of the Impact Lab has paved the way for Banka BioLoo to undertake more surveys with other user groups such as household members, employees and other stakeholders.
For more information:
Business Call to Action: bcta@undp.org
Banka BioLoo: sanjay.banka@bankabio.com
