Sanitation as a Business

January 1, 2010
By Sarah Bramley and Ned Breslin

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Sanitation as a Business is a new program Water For People has tested in Malawi. The ideas behind this alternative to traditional sanitation programs are innovative and stem from a simple truth: We do not have the money or human capacity available to build everyone who lacks improved sanitation a latrine. More importantly, programs that build latrines consistently struggle to have impact or reach scale, and often distort the market environment in ways that undermine future sanitation development. Sanitation as a Business tries to shift sanitation programming by changing the incentives and bringing the private sector into sanitation in new ways. The key to Sanitation as a Business is to make ongoing sanitation services the goal, rather than the latrine itself. When sanitation services are profitable and businesses see everyone without a latrine as a potential customer, businesses—rather than NGOs—will expand latrine coverage to increase their profit margin.

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