The document summarizes themes and opportunities from initial research on household toilets in Kumasi, Ghana across the five steps of the customer journey: Learn, Buy, Use, Maintain, Treat. For each step, it identifies themes learned from research and expert interviews and lists opportunities to improve access and uptake of sanitation solutions. The research found issues around affordability, stigma, marketing, financing, and lack of expertise that prevent adoption of toilets. It also profiles existing programs and companies addressing various steps in innovative ways.

1. Themes and Opportunities
from Initial Research Explorations
IDEO, Unilever, and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor
Household Toilet Project for Kumasi, Ghana
November 26, 2010
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 1

2. Customer Journey
LEARN BUY USE MAINTAIN TREAT
The IDEO team spent the first week of the project conducting secondary research and expert interviews
in preparation for our trip to Kumasi. We synthesized these learnings and mapped them to the five-step
customer journey related to sanitation to see it from a human-centric perspective. This document lays
out the themes and opportunity areas for each step of the process and includes inspirational product,
service, and business models that have come from our research and user submissions from OpenIDEO.
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 2

3. LEARN
The customer begins the journey by hearing and learning about sanitation options. This could happen
through local entrepreneurs, social marketing campaigns, and/or a facilitated CLTS program.
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4. LEARN
Themes:
• Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an effective
community-driven intervention which moves people from
disgust to shame to pride
• CLTS focuses on showing people feces and getting them to
see what a big issue it is
• Educators/facilitators from nearby communities are key to
leading the CLTS methodology
The "No Loo, No I Do" social marketing campaign
• Health benefits are only seen at the communal level, few health in India encourages brides to put pressure on their
benefits for a family when they improve their own sanitation fiancees to install a latrine before they will agree
to marriage
• Private sector latrine providers do little to market their products
• Demonstrating the product in use is critical and oftentimes
not done
• The urban poor must be specifically targeted for marketing
messages, social marketing campaigns, and promotions
• Celebrities and public figures (football players, musicians,
movie stars, political leaders) are effective advocates of
sanitation solutions
IDE Easy Latrine provides marketing training and
• Children can drive the purchasing decisions of their parents materials to entrepreneurs and showcases
by putting on pressure demonstration toilets
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5. LEARN
Opportunities:
• How might we shift the conversation from shame to pride to
encourage people to invest in their family's sanitation?
• How might we support sanitation entrepreneurs to effectively
market their products and services?
• How might we target the urban poor with messages about a
new offering?
• How might we identify the appropriate advocates for sanitation?
UNICEF’s CLTS program has facilitators ask
• How might we encourage community-wide acceptance and people if they will drink water with a piece of hair
adoption, rather than individual? covered in feces to encite disgust
WaterAID CLTS in Bangladesh has been effective
at getting communities to make sanitation decisions
together by exerting social pressure on one another
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 5

6. BUY
The next step of the journey is for the customer to pay for a household toilet or for use of a community latrine.
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7. BUY
Themes:
• People value and pay for status, dignity, privacy, and odor
reduction, not health, safety, access, or convenience
• Social pressure (bringing communities together to make
sanitation decisions) is an effective way to drive uptake
• Those without household solutions say it’s because they
can’t afford it - 3% if income is an appropriate target
• The flying toilet (using a plastic bag and throwing it outside)
CHF and Boafo have developed a sanitation
and bucket latrines are free and the real competition credit program to provide loans to landlords
• There’s a large opportunity to develop an affordable, safe,
household solution
• People will invest in a toilet when it’s seen as part of a home
improvement project
• The perception of lack of space is a barrier to in-home sanitation
• People will pay more for nicer-looking toilets and offering a
comparison is critical when selling
• Current toilet solutions are technology-driven and not necessarily
designed based on human preferences and behaviors
Camping and portable toilets are well-designed
but have limited capacity
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 7

8. BUY
Themes (continued):
• Landlords make decisions about housing improvements
and when financing options are provided may choose to
invest in upgrading
• Lack of expertise is a huge barrier to installation and purchase
• Financing is uncommon, but desirable for landlords and
families - loans or installment payments
• Usage is increased when people pay for their own toilets
• Reserve subsidies for the hard-core poor who truly need them Peepoople has developed a plastic bag that is
safer to use than existing plastic bags
• No one wants to pay to urinate, however, they are more
likely to pay to defecate
• People will buy toilets when needs become extreme- elderly,
disabled, pregnant woman, menstruating daughter
• Parents don’t pay for children to use toilets
Urine diversion toilets are effective but require a
lot of maintenance
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9. BUY
Opportunities:
• How might we encourage people to move away from free
sanitation alternatives?
• How might we offer people a range of sanitation alternatives?
• How might we overcome fears associated with lack of
expertise to allow people to have the confidence to make
purchasing decisions?
• How might we explore financing opportunities?
• How might we get people on the sanitation ladder and then
help them move up?
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10. USE
The third step of the journey is the use of the household or community toilet and the associated behaviors,
stigmas, and preferences surrounding it.
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11. USE
Themes:
• Good sanitation and cleanliness = high status within one’s
community
• Putting the toilet next to the kitchen is stigmatized, but associating
food with sanitation can make the toilet seem cleaner
• People prioritize odor removal, especially in the home
• Hierarchy within families (father, mother, children, guests)
leads to different behaviors
• Women and children have special needs, which no one is addressing SHE is providing affordable sanitary napkins
and encouraging schools to offer privacy for
• Privacy is a huge priority for women, but is not as important girls in the restrooms in Rwanda
for men or children
• In Kenya, there is a social stigma that the daughter shouldn’t
defecate where her father-in-law defecates
• Some question about whether safety is a concern for women
when they leave the home to defecate
• Sanitary napkin disposal is critical for girls and women,
especially in schools
• The excrement of children is more dangerous than adults’
because of higher concentrations of pathogens Small, plastic children’s potties are common in
Ghana and other regions of Africa
• Potties for children are prevalent throughout Africa
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 11

12. USE
Opportunities:
• How might we highlight cleanliness in the design of the toilet?
• How might we ensure odor removal of a household solution?
• How might we design effective sanitation solutions to
address the needs of women and children?
• How might we provide privacy for an in-home solution?
• How might we delineate the toilet from the rest of the house
in a small space?
EcoToilet in Kenya sells food next to the
community toilets, making customers believe
that the toilets must be clean if they’re able to
cook next to them
In India, wall tiles of religious figures disuade
men from urinating on the public street
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13. MAINTAIN
The fourth step is the maintenance of the toilet which includes cleaning, emptying, and servicing.
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14. MAINTAIN
Themes:
• Ownership is important for maintenance and cleaning
• Transporting one’s own waste is shameful
• People are willing to pay others to clean, empty, and
service their latrine
• Waste collection is stigmatized, but uniforms and professional
tools can counteract this
• Separating the entrepreneur from the waste makes the
business seem less dirty SC Johnson and CCS provide youth groups with
uniforms and professional cleaning supplies
• The waste business appeals more to men and is associated
with drugs, crime, and alcoholism
• Youth groups are potential entrepreneurs for sanitation
businesses because they are self-organized, have the trust
of the community, and are young and entrepreneurial
The gulper is an affordable manual technology
to clean pit latrines without making the service
provider do it by hand
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15. MAINTAIN
Opportunities:
• How might we make cleaning and removal easy and painless?
• How might we leverage youth groups to provide
sanitation services?
• How might we professionalize sanitation entrepreneurs?
• How might we provide marketing support to waste
entrepreneurs to increase their customer base?
• How might we leverage technology to optimize the business
Zoomlion trains youth groups to become sanitation
and make it more attractive to young entrepreneurs? franchisees and collect waste in Ghana
• How might we encourage healthy competition between
sanitation entrepreneurs without encouraging territorial disputes?
In the U.S., Earth Baby offers a green diaper
collection service, picking up waste from
people’s homes.
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 15

16. TREAT
The final step of the customer journey is treatment which includes safe disposal, treatment, and possible
reuse of the waste.
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17. TREAT
Themes:
• There are business opportunities at all points of the sanitation
ecosystem, except perhaps for treatment
• Treatment may need to be subsidized by the public or social
sectors because sufficient business opportunities do not exist
• Dumping waste is the free alternative and must be seen as
the competition
• Policy interventions are required to prevent dumping
Peepoople uses microdosing (urea embedded
• The market or treated waste (as fertilizer) is not nearly big in each bag) to allow the composting process to
enough compared to the supply begin immediately and happen more quickly
• There is a strong stigma against using human waste as
fertilizer for food - it’s more acceptable to use for flowers
• Fertilizer from poultry excrement is a free (or nearly free)
alternative to fertilizer from human waste in Kumasi
• Opportunities to capture biogas and use at home for
cookstoves or to sell back to the grid in bulk from community
sanitation blocks
Sanergy is capturing biogas and selling it back
to the grid in Kenya
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18. TREAT
Opportunities:
• How might we find treatment solutions that evolve with
customer perceptions?
• How might we identify appropriate markets for human waste?
• How might we liaise with government to put effective policies
and subsidies in place to effectively address treatment?
• How might we ensure the sustainability of the treatment
services we provide?
Large rose farm interested in buying fertilizer
• How might we make appropriate treatment options more from human waste to get organic certification
attractive than existing, free options like dumping? and export to EU
• How might we find the appropriate balance between
decentralized and centralized treatment options to leverage
economies of scale while limiting transportation costs?
In Ghana, fish ponds have been created to
ingest the human waste and then sell the fish
for consumption
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 18

19. Thank you to the following individuals for offering their time for expert interviews:
David Auerbach, Sanergy
Tamara Baker, IDE
April Davies, Water.org
Justin DeKoszmovszky, SC Johnson and Community Cleaning Services
Therese Dooley, UNICEF
Peter Hawking, WSP Mozambique/Worldbank
Andy Kirby, Yanapuma Foundation
Jacques Rusts, Envirosan
Suraj Sudhakar, Acumen Fund
Tatiana Thieme, University of Cambridge
Themes and Opportunities from Initial Research Explorations Page 19