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PROJECT NAHI XIX
Puerto Morelos, Mexico
Local Partner:
Luum Kanaab, A.C.
Biol. Dinah Drago
Apartado Postal 1145
Cancun, Quintana Roo Mexico
Tel (52) 99887-10300
Dinah Drago
Local Partner:
GEMA - Grupo Ecologista del Mayab, A.C.
Lic. Araceli Dominguez
Hotel El Rey del Caribe
Av Uxmal, esq. Nadar, S.M. 2-A
Cancun, Q. Roo 77500, Mexico
Tel 84-69-44
Araceli Dominguez
Principal Contact:
Laura Orlando
ReSource Institute
179 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02130 USA
Tel 617 524-7258
Fax 617 522-0690
Laura Orlando
SUMMARY
Project Nahi Xix is a waste-to-resource management program started in Puerto Morelos, Mexico in early 1993. The Project was created by a group of concerned citizens to address public health and environmental pollution problems associated with the disposal of human waste. The centerpiece of the effort is composting toilets, developed with technical assistance from the ReSource Institute, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization. The ReSource Composting Toilets are known locally as "Banos Ecologicos Nahi Xix." The financing, building, and maintenance of the toilets are local initiatives. Their huge popularity, measured by demand for new units and usage of existing units, testifies to their success.
D E S C R I P T I O N
Puerto Morelos looks like Cancun did 30 years ago. Today, Cancun's rampant development has meant ecological disaster and an urban planning nightmare. Some of the two million tourists visiting Cancun annually are looking for greener pastures to the south and they are looking squarely at Puerto Morelos, a community of 1500 people, 50 km to the south.
With mangrove swamps on three sides, the world's second largest barrier reef a twenty minute swim from its beaches, and an underground system of freshwater rivers underneath its limestone foundation, Puerto Morelos is steward to a rich and fragile ecosystem. This ecosystem is threatened by the pollution and land development brought by burgeoning tourism and a rapidly increasing population base.
One source of pollution, identified as a serious problem by local ecologists, health officials, and community members is organic waste filtering into the groundwater from latrines, septic tanks, and open-air defecation. At the request of the city and local activists, the U.S.-based ReSource Institute for Low Entropy Systems (ReSource) introduced Puerto Morelos' first composting toilet and has worked with community members to map out a strategy for developing toilet systems and greywater treatment that prevent pollution of the groundwater and nutrient discharge into the reefs and mangroves while improving public health in Puerto Morelos' neighborhoods.
The first composting toilet, built with local labor and materials in May 1993, has been enthusiastically received by diverse representatives of the Puerto Morelos community. In the region, the composting toilets are called Banos Ecologico "Nahi Xix," after the Mayan term "Nahi Xix," which literally translates to "house of residue." Mayans, who make up over half of the community and live in the town's inland confines, find it an appropriate answer to ecological and public health concerns and the difficulties of building a septic tank or latrine on the town's limestone foundation. Its fertilizer end-products - rich in nitrogen and micro-nutrients - are a boon to dwindling corn yields, yields that many Mayans depend on for food and income. The remaining community members, a mix of working class Mexicans and wealthier visitors living on the beachfront, have found the composting toilet an appropriate and acceptable alternative to expensive sewerage and a model of ecological development.
Goal:
The Project's principal goal is to demonstrate how the human waste management needs of Puerto Morelos, a community with complex development issues and diverse household income levels, can be met with a waste-to-resource management program that incorporates composting toilets, greywater recycling systems, and intensive community participation.
Methodology:
The Project aims to find the right blend of technology, decentralized managerial responsibility, and system costing to match community willingness and ability to pay. The approach to establishing composting toilets and greywater recycling systems in Quintana Roo includes:
- Using proven technical design parameters.
- A Flexibility in degrees of sophistication of design (i.e.; materials, size, energy needs, cost, water and waterless systems, appearance).
- Building for beauty; integrating the composting toilet into the living space, attention
to detail, and standardizing the use of aesthetically pleasing components (such as bamboo walls, natural light and ventilation in the bathroom).
- Institutionalized maintenance (not dependent on individual households).
- Emphasizing women's participation in every phase.
- Education programs
- Training and certification of local builders for on-site construction (apprenticeship programs).
- Certification of completed units.
- Regional manufacturing of systems to more efficiently and economically meet demand.
- Developing small and medium size businesses related to: construction, parts fabrication, fertilizer collection and use, and maintenance.
- Outreach to government and policy-makers for support, interagency cooperation, and integration into public health, environmental, development, and housing programs.
Beneficiaries
Households in low-income neighborhoods are the principal beneficiaries of the project. Other beneficiaries are eco-tourism operators, middle and upper-income households.
Partners
- Municipal Delegation of Puerto Morelos.
- GEMA -- Grupo Ecologista del Mayab, A.C..
- Community of Puerto Morelos.
- Luum Kanaab, A.C.
Local industries generated
- Fiberglass workers -- unit inspection and clean out doors; fan housing.
- Bricklayers -- unit construction.
- Local laborers -- maintenance and fertilizer collection and use.
Training
- Construction -- bricklayers, woodworkers, palaperos, pottery & fiberglass workers.
- Maintenance -- local workers and households.
- Enterprise development -- technical and business support.
- Ecological -- conferences, workshops, talks with children at the local elementary school, news media.
- Public health -- women's health communities, local health workers, household campaigns, school children.
- Planning -- City government, state government agencies, housing authorities, households.
Cost
US$300 - $900 (compost chamber and superstructure, labor included).
SUSTAINABILITY
Effectively dealing with human waste is a challenge for communities, rich and poor, everywhere in the world. In Puerto Morelos, we have a model program that addresses both human health and environmental issues in a manner that is acceptable to the local population, environmentally non-degrading, and sustainable.
Its methodology addresses the problem -- human waste management -- and its solution -- incorporating continuous composting toilets -- by marketing the technology on its aesthetic and ecological merits, maintaining the project as a locally driven and financed initiative, and supporting small businesses to build and maintain the toilets and collect its fertilizer end-products.
Its greatest impact -- and lasting change -- is the demonstration and subsequent realization by the local population and regional policy-makers that there is an affordable and viable alternative to conventional sewerage and pit-latrines. As a result, not only is there a reduction in pollution but there is a beneficial use of the treatment system's end-products; a safe and odorless nitrogen rich fertilizer and humus.
The project's sustainability is rooted in its acceptance by the people that need and use the toilets. The facilities built in Puerto Morelos, both public and private, are hygienic and aesthetically pleasing. Beauty, coupled with an odor-free bathroom and a need for toilet facilities, translates into a demand that drives the project. The demand is met by local entrepreneurs, trained and certified by the ReSource Institute and its local counterparts, who are in turn paid by the beneficiaries for their services. Revolving loan funds help some project participants to pay for their toilets. The project is not dependent on outside financing.
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