National Water Center, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
National Water Center, Eureka Springs, AR
Updated: April 2014 Contact: Contact: NWC
Contents ©1999-2014 by National Water Center. All rights reserved worldwide.
Letter from George Anna Clark
Friends:
Ecological dry toilets are among the most effective and appropriate internationally known techniques for protecting water. The technique is simple, affordable and can be initiated by individuals to improve health and the quality of life in both rural and urban communities.
Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of people, ecological dry toilets have been installed little by little in Mexico, overcoming resistance and obstacles of authorities of the dominant "non-culture" which contaminates water.
Today something shameful is happening, worthy of times of voracious commercial liberty:
The business Anfora, which produces toilet bowls, is in the process of patenting this technique (of Vietnamese origin which has existed in our country since the 1980's) in their favor and is trying to take away the right of production from indigenous and rural communities in our country who have installed modest workshops for producing these toilets!!
Anfora´s action will impede the affordability of this ecological technique and bring to an end the jobs of hundreds of self-employed people who express their ecological convictions by this work. Anfora wants to insure its profits even though it is a company that has done nothing for designing or improving this technique, nor for promoting its adequate use (doing so would prevent a guaranteed disaster: experience has demonstrated that without follow-up these toilets do not succeed in transforming habits).
Jean Robert and César Añorve, two of the most enthusiastic promoters of dry sanitation, will not stand by as a company cynically appropriates what is not theirs. Jean and César ask for our help in reclaiming public and free domain of this technique.
Action 1:
We need testimonies of people who know and are using this technique from years ago, the farther back the better!
Please write to smarcos@infosel.net.mx or cita@central.edsa.net.mx letting us know if you have/use dry toilets and the year and source where you learned about this technique.
Action 2:
We are in the process of writing another letter that could be signed internationally as a petition against Anfora´s action. We will keep in touch.
Thank you for helping people reclaim the fruit of their efforts and in making companies understand that they can not go around the world robbing with impunity.
Areli Carreón
(translation slightly changed from original Spanish version)
"Dear Friends,
Hi everyone! We urgently need your help because we have a little problem here. The brief history is like this: Cesar Añorve designed that seat (although not as good as the current version, of course) fifteen years ago. Perhaps 9 years later, a large company, Anfora bought the seat from Cesar, copied it (very, very poorly, I might add) and sold it to the government by the tens of thousands (and then the government gave them away to people who didn't want them).
Now Anfora has demanded that all the small independent toilet bowl manufacturers be closed. As a matter of fact, we're not even supposed to USE toilets that aren't theirs. But not only toilets that aren't theirs... ANY toilet that DOES NOT USE WATER... At any rate, we believe that Anfora doesn't have any idea how big this effort is - either in Mexico or around the world. If you'd like more information, we've attached two translated letters of 1) César´s letter against the monopolizing actions of the company Anfora and 2) an introductory letter by an activist friend.
We are starting to collect information that we could use in a possible court case and it would help us greatly to have written acknowledgement, with specific dates regarding: It would help us greatly to have written acknowledgement, with specific dates regarding:
1) your work with/use of dry toilets in general
2) your knowledge of the people/ organizations in Mexico who have been working with dry toilets
A few brief sentences would suffice.
Thank you very much, and please pass on this information to friends.
George Anna Clark
George Anna Clark
Espacio de Salud, A.C.
AP 1-1576
Calle Humboldt 46, Col. Centro
Cuernavaca, Morelos 62000 MEXICO
web.laneta.apc.org\esac\actividad
tel/fax: +52 (7) 318-0720
Our friend, Alfonso Silva, is one of the hundreds of popular experts in ecological sanitation throughout Mexico, who earn their living fabricating urine diverting bowls for ecological dry toilets in small family workshops. This and the other family workshops producing ecological toilet bowls have been functioning since many years before the businessmen of Anfora even knew of this technique.
To refresh the memory of Anfora:
Gentlemen: Have you forgotten that during Mr. Diódoro Carrasco´s term as Governor of Oaxaca a government official of the Ministry of Urban Development and Public Works sent you one of the bowls made by Mr. Jerónimo Pérez (Alfonso Silva´s partner) so you could manufacture them by the thousands?
Maybe you do not remember, maybe you do not even know that your first millionaire contract with the government of Oaxaca is due to the exemplar work of people like Don Jerónimo of San Luis Beltrán; it was in his bowl producing workshop where most of the government technicians were trained at that time.
You also most certainly do not know that in 1989, five years before you easily cornered public funds with the sale of thousands of urine-diverting bowls to the government of the state of Oaxaca, the group Espacios Culturales de Innovación Tecnológica was already offering technical training to the Ministry of Urban Development and Public Works of Oaxaca for their dry toilet installation programs, and Espacios was also disseminating the diverting bowls which you pretend to "invent" eleven years later?
You also surely do not know that after the 1985 earthquake César Añorve and Jean Robert, built the first ecological dry toilets with urine diversion in Oaxaca in a small town named San José Sabinillo. Since long before then, they have dedicated themselves to encouraging the use of techniques which prevent the contamination of water and contribute to enriching the soil. This work can be proved in numerous publications within and outside of Mexico.
As must be assumed, you do not know that since 1982 the Guatemalan group CEMAT constructed vietnamese type latrines with urine separation, inspired by the pioneering work of Dr. Nguyen Dang Duc whose first reports in the Vietnamese language date to 1960.
Perhaps you also do not know that by menacing Mr. Alfonso Silva, you menace hundreds of men and women who work for the popularization of a technique which prevents the use of water as a medium for evacuating excrement rather than permitting its transformation into natural fertilizer. These are extraordinarily sensible and simple men and women, who contribute to constructing alternatives to conventional sanitation so urgently needed in a country where one can wake up drowning in wastewater.
Gentlemen of Anfora, where do your pretensions come from? Where does so much arrogance come from? Where does so much power-mongering come from, when the toilet you produce is a crude copy of our excellent diverting toilet? Would it not be more fruitful if you would contribute by at least not getting in the way of these exemplar citizen initiatives which promote taking care of water? Would it not be healthier and more intelligent if you would thank us for opening the door for you to a business that you did not even imagine before 1994?
Certainly it is an easy business, not subject to the revered laws of the market. A business where a potential client, the government, buys by the thousands for its massive latrinization campaigns which are generally accompanied by failure, with rare exceptions, because of the way they are imposed on the people.
Gentlemen of Anfora, you must know that we are not ready to abandon our work of so many years dedicated to taking care of water.
In closing this letter, we have only one last question: have you no shame?"
The World of Composting Toilets has all the most current information available on composting toilets.
See article in WaterWorks Journal, Page 31 Healing the Waters