The Jeepney and the Tuk-tuk

The jeepney and the tuk-tuk are popular modes of (low-cost public) transport in the Philippines and Thailand respectively. In both cases the open air design is a double-edged sword: the outside breeze alleviates the tropical heat, but you're also exposed to smog and dust. Air-conditioning is out of the question, unless you want more expensive alternatives like a cab or bus. More recently, there are a few fully electric jeepneys ("E-jeepney") plying the streets of Manila.

The tuk-tuk has equivalents in many developing countries, and is generically referred to as the auto rickshaw. In the Philippines there is a slight variation ("tricycles") where passengers are in a cabin adjacent to the driver.




For the uninitiated, here is a funny how-to guide for riding jeepneys in the Philippines:

Large-scale Labor Training programs

Of all the countries that depend on the foreign currency earnings of its expatriate workforce, the Philippines stands out. First the scale is second to none: a quarter of the workforce are employed overseas. College graduates are willing to go abroad to work low-level service jobs, to earn salaries way beyond what they could earn domestically. Second, a legacy of the American colonial presence means most people speak English. Third is diversification: Filipino workers are trained to go after many types of jobs ranging from domestic/hotel work, merchant marines, drivers, construction, ... And as many ex-pats in Asia and the Middle East, Filipinos are the musicians and nightclub entertainers in many parts of the world. No wonder the NY Times recently reported that:

... Despite the world’s sagging economy, the country set records last year for the number of workers sent abroad and the sums they returned.

Every Philippine government makes a concerted effort to market and promote Filipino workers in all corners of the world. More importantly there are many government and private programs that not only place workers overseas, but prepare them for the challenges they'll face when they go abroad. It's not surprising that other countries don't have similar programs in place. Doing so is an admission that the local economy can't absorb its own citizens. But the benefits are compelling. These programs designed to send workers abroad, have proven themselves time and again, through many economic slowdowns. At the end of the day, they're able to get large numbers of people employed, at rates that few employee re-training programs can match.

... On every corner of this jeepney-jammed capital, someone seems to be coming from or going to a job overseas. At the Magsaysay Training Center, beside Manila Bay, college graduates scrub replicas of cruise ship cabins, hoping for housekeeping jobs that can pay four times the local wage. A park across the street doubles as a sailors’ bazaar, a reminder that the Philippines supplies at least a fifth of the world’s seafarers.

In government seminars a mile away, throngs of outbound maids learn to greet future bosses in Arabic, Italian and Cantonese. Some cry through a film about a nanny who wins an overseas job but loses the love of her children.

... Elsewhere on campus, women learn to fix cars, sew skirts and set banquet tables. Posters celebrate alumnae overseas. (“Marjury Briones is now working at the Pars Hotel in Bahrain as a flair bartender.”)

... Mexicans are closely tied to one place (the United States), and one industry (construction). Filipinos work across the globe in dozens of occupations. Mexican migration is unmanaged and mostly illegal. Filipino workers are promoted by the state, and most go with contracts and visas.

... The Magsaysay Training Center in Manila feels less like a vocational school than a theme park of migrant trades, filled with replicas of foreign work sites.

Student sailors in a simulator room steer ships through high-tech storms. Student bakers in toques practice cream puff injections. A glass wall offers a view of a luxury hotel room, where instructors watch trainees wipe the marble bath and stock the minibar.

Two low-cost Water Purifiers

A recent Economist special report on water noted that 1 billion people "... have no access to piped drinking water or safe taps or wells." Over the last few years, companies have rolled out products to make safe drinking water more affordable, and in this post I'm highlighting two new purifiers from India.

Tata Swach:

Company's description of health benefits: "... removes harmful bacteria and viruse"

Filters 3,000 liters per cartridge

Depending on the model, the retail cost is $16 to $22. For a family of 5, the company estimates the cost of using the Swach will be less than $1 per month.

Hindustan Unilever's Pureit:

Company's description of health benefits: "... removes harmful viruses and bacteria and removes parasites and pesticide impurities, giving you as safe as boiled water".

Retail cost is about $43

The Mahindra Gio

While the Nano low-cost compact sedan justifiably gets a lot of press, the less well-known Mahindra Gio, a new compact truck from India, is just as impressive. The price and features makes it an affordable option for budding entrepreneurs in the developing world. I hope the product is successful enough that we start seeing similar products from other companies.


Here are a few factoids about it:

1. At a starting price is about $$3,525, it can handle a payload of up to 1,100-pounds in its 5-foot cargo box; fuel consumption is about 64 mpg.

2. It uses a 2-cylinder diesel engine manufactured by Kohler.

3. The engine is mounted in the rear, below the cargo box.

Keeping the engine in the rear ensures a lower noise level inside the cabin and moreover the heat from the engine does not enter the cabin. Thereby keeping your cabin cooler, and more comfortable even in hot weather.

Kitchen Appliances: A Portable Refigerator and Stove

Featured in the pages of the WSJ late last year, the $70 ChotuKool portable refrigerator is the opening salvo in the intense competition for India's consumer appliance market. The market is large enough that Indian firms are investing R&D money to come up with low-cost alternatives to traditional household appliances. $70 is still a steep price for many of the world's poor, so many will have take out microloans or pool their resources in small collectives to afford these products.




Here's a related example from the same WSJ piece: First Energy's Oorja (biomass) stove. The stove costs $23 and the pellets needed to use it, cost about $5.50/month.

Low-cost Toilets

Having enough clean toilets is a major problem that plagues most developing countries. Growing up I remember walking through slums in the Philippines and being taken aback by where people "did their business". To a much lesser extent, homeless people in the US face the similar problem of lack of public restrooms.

A recent article in the Economist puts a spotlight on the social and public health impact of the absence of latrines. Having to go out in the open is an embarrassing experience for most of us, but for poor people in developing countries, out in the open is their only option. Add the fact that socioeconomic class consciousness is much more pronounced in developing countries, one can understand why having to do so regularly becomes a traumatic experience (especially for women).

... Surprisingly, some of those who have to defecate in the open do not mind. Some rural men, and even women, quite enjoy a social squat in the bushes. But for many, and certainly for those who must live with its consequences, it is a disagreeable practice. Women and, especially, girls often find it embarrassing. Many women in South Asia contain themselves by day and wait till nightfall before venturing into the shadows. Girls at African schools without latrines often drop out rather than risk the jeers of their male contemporaries. Slum-dwellers in Nairobi have to pick their way through streams of sewage and take care to avoid “flying toilets”, plastic bags filled with excrement that are flung with desperate abandon into the night.

Without piped water to wash their hands with, let alone to drink, the open-air defecators and another 800m people with access only to primitive latrines are inevitably carriers of disease. If they could wash their hands with soap and water, they could block one of the main transmission routes for the spread of both diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections. As it is, patients with water-related diseases fill half the hospital beds in the poorest countries, and dirty water and poor sanitation kill 5,000 children a day.

The article mentions two low-cost alternatives a non-profit dedicated to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide, and Peepoo -- a single-use, personal, and biodegradable toilet alternative.

... Outfits like the World Toilet Organisation, based in Singapore, now believe you have to make lavatories “as sexy as mobile phones” if you are to get people to accept them, and that means literally selling them. Once people have invested some of their own money in a loo, they will use it. The World Bank confirms that the most successful sanitation projects involve only a small subsidy.

Where building a fixed latrine is not possible—slum-dwellers seldom own the land they live on, or have much incentive to improve a site to which they have no legal rights—entrepreneurs may help out. The Peepoo is a personal, single-use bag that the Swedish founder of the company, Anders Wilhelmsen, describes as the hygienic version of Nairobi’s flying toilet, intended, to begin with, for the same Kenyan users. Sealed by knotting, it acts as a micro treatment plant to break down the excreta. Since the bag is made of degradable bio-plastic, when it has served its primary purpose it can be sold with its contents as fertiliser. Indeed, the hope is that a market will develop in which the same people will trade in the bags before and after use. Each will sell for 5-7 cents, about the same as a conventional plastic bag, and though a subsidy will be needed at first, the operation is meant to become self-sustaining, and indeed profitable.

Below are videos that explain the vision behind both Peepoo and the World Toilet Organization. Mark your calendars, World Toilet Day is on November 19th!

The Peepoo


World Toilet Organization (the other WTO)

UPDATE (6/1/2011): PRI's The World interviews Arno Rosemarin of the Stockholm Environment Institute, on the importance of low-cost/sanitary, ecological toilets.