In most situations and most places, toilets and defecation are taboo topics for discussion. They are at the bottom of the list of topics for dinner table conversations. Yet 2.4 billion people have no access to toilets in developing countries. In Indonesia, a country with rapid economic development, it is unacceptable that nearly half the population has no access to a toilet and practises open defecation.

Ms Ni Made Utami Dwipayanti, a PhD student in Griffith’s Centre for Population and Environmental Health, hopes to contribute to the world effort to end open defecation and access to basic toilets for all by 2030. She is currently conducting research into the determinants of toilet adoption and sustainability in rural areas. Ms Ni Made Utami Dwipayanti has found that in spite of the country’s rapid modernisation, even something as simple as a basic toilet has not been adopted in rural areas as quickly as other technologies such as television or mobile phones. Through her participation in the national program of Community Based Total Sanitation (STBM) since 2010 and in the Provincial Working Group of Drinking Water and Sanitation (Pokja AMPL) in Bali, Indonesia, Ms Ni Made Utami Dwipayanti realised that encouraging people to use the technologies is even more complex than designing the technology. She also states that 

The complexity is even greater when we realise that it is not just using the toilet, but ensuring that the waste is safely disposed of.

Ms Ni Made Utami Dwipayanti is an Indonesian Australia Awards scholar and environmental engineer teaching in the School of Public Health at Udayana University in Bali.

Please visit the Australian Awards website to read the full Toilet Technology article.