Water Hygiene Convenience (WHC), a company founded by South African, Paseka Lesolang, is one of the early entrants for Standard Bank’s Water 4 Africa competition.

The company makes toilets more efficient and sustainable. Using up to 70% less water than traditional toilets, the WHC product uses a foot flush to enhance its operation. One step equals “half a flush”; two steps results in a full flush.

Other key features include a detergent reservoir to fight bacteria as well as a waste digester which helps reduce clogging, spillage and uses less water.

“For every million of these toilets installed the potential exists for 400 jobs to be created and four million lives to be improved through better hygiene practices. The biggest impact, however, is water conservation as an estimated 72 billion gallons of water, the equivalent of 10 000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, could be saved for other uses,” explains Lesolang.

It was through the launch of Water 4 Africa and placing an emphasis on the plight of water scarcity in South Africa and its neighbours that much had to be done to change people’s mind-set and behaviour regarding water usage.

“We are looking forward to seeing the best of the best ideas that have graduated through the crowdsourcing process. . We’ll be facilitating a process to encourage investment in these so that they can be implemented, and make a meaningful difference to people’s lives,” says Paul Steenkamp, head of innovation capability at Standard Bank.

The competition opened on 27 October and will continue to 11 December this year. The emphasis for the competition is on workable, everyday solutions.

Standard Bank will consider funding appropriate workable solutions and help their inventors to bring these “brain children” to market. Entries will be assessed by a panel of specialist judges and winners will be announced on 15 January next year.

Participants can submit as many entries as they like.

For more information, please visit www.standardbank.com/water4africa