Modern toilets on track to solve China’s rural waste problem

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For generations, a toilet in China’s rural countryside was little more than a hole in the ground, with a hut over the top offering privacy. People conducted their business by squatting over the hole. Their droppings would fall directly into the pit below, with no flushing or sewer system to dispose of the waste. These pit toilets are still being used in many village households.

“Pit toilets” are still used in China’s villages. /CGTN Photo

You can only imagine the smell, and more importantly, the health risks. But for China’s rural farmers, they cover a practical purpose. Every day, farmers would collect the night soil by the bucket loads from their relieving pits and spread it in their farmland to fertilize the crops.

“It’s the only fertilizer we use for small family farms,” says Wang Tichun, a farmer from a village called Fucheng in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

In recent years, China has been on a campaign to eliminate these pit toilets. Called a “toilet revolution,” the campaign started as part of a drive to improve public facility standards to boost tourism, and grew to include an overhaul of the country’s rural toilet system for the sake of hygiene.

Wang Tichun collects night soil to fertilize crops./CGTN Photo

“After all, you know what they say,” said Li Shizheng, an energy official in Santai County in Sichuan Province, “Toilets are a barometer of civilization.”

Most farmers in his county are now living in modern village houses with flush toilets, with a small tweak – here, human waste isn’t just flushed away. It’s flushed to an underground tank to compost, producing biogas which can be used to generate energy.

“China’s countryside problems need countryside solutions,” says Li. “This biogas program utilizes the resources we have to solve the problem of waste management and energy use.”

But the pit toilet headache doesn’t end here. For many of China’s villagers, age-old habits prove difficult to just flush away.

Li Xiuzhi moved into her current home a decade ago. The second floor of her home can pass for a simple city apartment, but next to her first floor living room is a relieving pit.

“Only my children and grandchildren use the flush toilet upstairs,” she said, disapprovingly. “I think it’s such a waste of water.”

The “toilet revolution” may prove to be harder than it seems.