HandyPod

The Handy Pod is a water treatment system designed to filter wastewater in floating communities using natural vegetation. The Handy Pod is inserted under a floating house’s toilet, capturing the raw sewage into an expandable bag, called a digester. The Pod uses microbes and fungi to break down the organic sludge into gases such as carbon dioxide, ammonia, and hydrogen.

While some microbes in the waste survive the first step of filtration, they are then washed into a pod filled with water hyacinth. The hyacinth roots collect bacteria, leaving the water surrounding it safe enough to play and swim in, but not drink. Further testing is being conducted in order to fully treat the wastewater.

The Handy Pod was tested in a floating village in Cambodia for over three years with support from Conservation International and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Exploration Challenges Program for Water and Sanitation. During the pilot project, Handy Pods were given to 35 houses in a village on Tonle Sap Lake, and the pods reduced E. coli in the ambient water by 50 percent. A scale-up of the Pod is being trialed in 10 floating villages.

Publicly available: No
Countries where available: Cambodia, contact supplier. Price range: 20 to 50 USD
Offered or can be licensed for local manufacture: Yes

Dimensions: ~ 2m length, 1m height, 0.5m width
Weight: full, above ground: ~ 350kg

Documentation, article, or review