FERTILOO-P
FertiLoo-p is a proposal for a network of floating toilets (WC’s) and composting port embedded within the Cai Rang Floating Market on the Vietnamese Mekong Delta River.
Competition Entry | Can Tho, Vietnam | 2020
Collaborators: Ali Chen, Evan Shieh
The largest floating market in the region, Cai Rang is a major water-based trading hub for local produce, a popular tourist destination, and is home to hundreds of local households, many of which spend their entire lives on sampan boats. However, as with many informal settlements, Cai Rang market faces serious sanitation issues, starting with a lack of public toilet facilities. Boat residents often deposit excrement directly into the river that is simultaneously used for cooking, bathing, and clothes washing. These sanitation issues are interconnected with many other challenges, including economic (unstable income), health (limited safe drinking water and health facilities), and educational difficulties that the community faces.
Addressing these issues, the open-loop, bottom-up concept of FertiLoo-p introduces a new waste-income economy that links into the existing Cai Rang market. FertiLoo-p COLLECTS waste directly at its source via individually owned WC sampans; GATHERS the market community around new floating health hubs via an aggregation of these new WC boats; CONVERTS this waste into eco-friendly fertilizer at a community composting port, and uses the converted compost to GROW produce at local existing farms that is then sold at the Cai Rang market for consumption and eventually waste, thus completing the open-loop cycle. FertiLoo-p addresses the sanitation needs of the Cai Rang economy from both a individual user to a broader network level while also providing the community with much-needed social & health amenities.
