Strengthening Markets for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

Increasing health outcomes and building resilient communities

Our work in Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) recognizes that access to quality products and services, combined with healthy behaviors, is essential to improving lives and strengthening markets. iDE works to expand adoption of affordable, desirable WASH solutions by strengthening market systems that deliver products and services people want, need, and can afford. Through our Market-Based Sanitation (MBS) approach, iDE has facilitated the sale of more than two million improved latrines in rural, peri-urban, and urban communities across nine countries in Asia and Africa since 2010. For over two decades, iDE has demonstrated that a MBS approach to WASH can expand access to sanitation and water solutions while improving health outcomes and economic opportunity.

Since launching our WASH market development efforts, more than 15.6 million people in nine countries (Cambodia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nepal, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique) have gained access to improved sanitation and learned how to protect their health and their families. And iDE’s work spans the full sanitation value chain including pioneering fecal sludge management programs in Ghana and Cambodia, helping communities safely treat and manage waste. In Bangladesh, in-depth market research identified five key customer segments for sanitation products and services, helping facilitate the sale of more than 1.5 million toilets. Further, sanitation sales initially lagged expectations until we learned that customers wanted more than a basic latrine in Bangladesh. When decorative tiles around the toilet pan were introduced as an optional feature, demand increased, even though it raised the purchase price.

iDE’s WASH work also addresses solid waste management, menstrual health climate-resilient sanitation, and behavior change and sales, among other innovations that strengthen sustainable sanitation markets across the 12 countries where we operate. Central to this approach is Human-Centered Design (HCD), which helps us understand what motivates customers and how markets function. By identifying barriers and opportunities, we design products, services, and business models that respond to real demand.And in Cambodia, iDE facilitated the sale of 340,000 latrines between 2011 and 2019, contributing to an increase in sanitation coverage in program provinces from 29% in 2012 to 73% in 2019; now, over 1 in 5 toilets in rural Cambodia are Easy Latrines.

Sanitation coverage radically increased across the country

The nation leads the world in reducing the rate of open defecation with household sanitation coverage as high as 88 percent in target provinces

Following a concerted effort by national and subnational governments, iDE and other partner organizations have joined forces to radically increase improved sanitation coverage and end the practice of defecating in the open.

WASH Publications

Check out these publications and content from our work in this area:

When is a slab more than just a slab?

Research Learning Brief: Sanitation in Complex Environments (SCORE)

When is a slab more than just a slab?

Reaching Open Defecation Free Status with grassroots partnerships

Cambodia Sanitation Marketing Scale-Up Program (SMSU): Learnings from a decade of implementation

Using market-based approaches for hand hygiene

iDE Cambodia WASH Behavior Change Campaign

Tr Addressing Fecal Sludge Management In Rural Locations 2020 Update

Policy Brief: Understanding How Sanitation Sales Agent Gender Affects Key Sanitation Behaviors in Nepal

Policy Brief: Final Hewlett Research Brief Subsidy Uptake

iDE And Water Aid Climate Change Sanitation In Rural Cambodia Brief

Dio Sera Factsheet

Climate Change Sanitation In Rural Cambodia Brief

2023 Microbial Hazards In Real World Alternating Dual Pit Latrines Treated With Storage And Lime In Rural Cambodia

Infiltrating the market with clean water

iDE’s social enterprise, Hydrologic, won the 2018 Unilever Global Development Award!

Having safe water improves the situation of women and children, who are often responsible for fetching and boiling water.

Market-Based Menstrual Solutions Can Unlock Options for Women and Girls

Addressing the needs of menstruators around the world

At iDE, we power entrepreneurs to end poverty, including period poverty. To be successful, it is essential to create an ecosystem of products and services that are designed by women and menstruators for women and menstruators.

Clean hands, better lives

Designing handwashing solutions

The biggest barrier to handwashing is not always the availability of water or soap, but rather knowledge. Making the connection between dirty hands and disease is the first step.