World Toilet Day 2024: LIXIL Maximizes Impact Through Innovation and Strategic Partnerships

As we approach World Toilet Day on November 19, LIXIL (TSE Code: 5938), maker of pioneering water and housing products, is proud to highlight the significant strides we have made in global sanitation and hygiene.  Global sanitation and hygiene is one of the strategic pillars of LIXIL’s Impact Strategy, and an important driver towards realizing our corporate purpose to make better homes a reality for everyone, everywhere.

Globally, approximately 3.5 billion people do not have access to safely managed sanitation services and roughly 2 billion people are without basic hand washing facilities at home. LIXIL has set the target of improving sanitation and hygiene for 100 million people around the world by 2025 through its sanitation and hand hygiene solutions. LIXIL has made steady progress, positively impacting the lives of approximately 68 million people across 45 countries¹.

Expanding Impact through Partnerships
In order to maximize our impact and accelerate our sanitation initiatives, we work closely with influential international and local organizations, including the United Nations agency for children (UNICEF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“Make a Splash!” Partnership with UNICEF
Our 'Make a Splash!' partnership with UNICEF has increased the availability and affordability of safe sanitation in six target countries including  Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Over the past five years, this collaboration has provided 12.7 million people with access to basic sanitation and hygiene. This shared-value partnership, extended to 2027, builds on our tangible impact and key lessons learned, focusing on market-based strategies to make  sanitation and hygiene accessible where they are needed most across Asia and Africa.

LIXIL’s partnership with UNICEF has provided critical insights into five key dimensions required to develop sustainable sanitation markets: supply, demand, financing, enabling environment, and sales. By focusing on these areas and taking a holistic approach, we aim to scale our impact and bring safe sanitation and hygiene² to even more people in the coming years.

USAID and LIXIL: Partnership for Better Living
USAID and LIXIL launched the "Partnership for Better Living: Affordable, Accessible, Adaptable Sanitation and Hygiene Solutions  (PBL)" program in 2022. This public-private partnership aims to create self-sustaining sanitation and hygiene markets, delivering long-term health, social, and economic benefits focusing on expanding the market for affordable sanitation and hygiene products and enhancing supply chain reliability for underserved communities in developing countries.

By leveraging USAID's extensive reach and LIXIL's design and innovation expertise through the award-winning social business SATO brand, the partnership originated with a goal to provide 2 million people with sustainable and affordable  sanitation access  by 2026. The partners have already exceeded this goal, impacting more than 3 million people³.  

To date, the partnership has de-risked and grown SATO’s presence in  Madagascar, Senegal, and Philippines, where we have established licensed importers and distributors to ensure product availability, and where we are building a network  of retailers, sales agents, and trained masons to create a dependable and sustainable sanitation supply chain.  In 2024, USAID and LIXIL expanded the partnership to Liberia and Guatemala.  

Accelerating Collaborative Efforts
Continued product development and increased collaborations with public and private organizations, NGOs and community partners have enabled the installation of SATO products in schools, healthcare facilities, community toilets, refugee camps, and other high-traffic locations. This expansion has significantly increased the number of people benefiting from improved sanitation and hygiene compared to the initial focus on home installations.

In 2020, SATO launched the ‘School Toilet Enhancement Program (STEP)’, an initiative aimed at upgrading school toilets to reduce barriers to attendance caused by inadequate sanitation and hygiene facilities. The program first rolled out in Africa , improving sanitation for 69,000 children across six countries including Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria and Bangladesh. SATO has recently introduced the SATO Shop, an e-commerce platform featuring merchandise like T-shirts designed by local artists from Asia and Africa. All proceeds from the SATO Shop help fund the STEP programme, enhancing school sanitation.

Designing Toilets for the Future
Aligned with the 2024 World Toilet Day theme, “Toilets - A Place for Peace,” LIXIL has strengthened its commitments to delivering sustainable sanitation solutions through LIXIL Public Partners (LPP), the company’s first dedicated public sector engagement platform.

LIXIL has partnered with Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) to bring a game-changing solution to communities that lack access to sanitation infrastructure.

In March, LIXIL became the first commercial licensing partner for Georgia Tech’s Generation 2 Reinvented Toilet (G2RT) technologies. The G2RT operates independently of traditional infrastructure like sewers and septic tank systems, offering a self-sufficient sanitation solution. This standalone toilet incorporates cutting-edge technology to process waste on-site, purifying the liquid waste for reuse and converting solid waste into pathogen-free, compostable material.

LIXIL will invest in further development to refine these revolutionary technologies into products suitable for use in both public and individual households. The G2RT project focuses on bringing this technology to market,  ensuring safety, reliability, durability, and efficient power consumption while reducing costs to make the toilet affordable for all. Additionally, LIXIL will advocate to ensure that the necessary legal frameworks and regulations are in place that enable new innovative products to come to market. 

LIXIL's President and CEO, Kinya Seto, commented:
"Today, the world is not on track to reach the UN SDGs Goal 6 by 2030, and ensuring access to safe sanitation and hygiene is more critical than ever. We are committed to addressing this global issue through our products, innovations and strategic collaborations.

Since its launch in Bangladesh in 2013, our award-winning social business SATO has continued to expand its reach and product portfolio through collaborations with public and private partners. In a significant leap from our existing SATO business, we have partnered with Georgia Tech and taken the first step toward commercializing the G2RT technology, designed to operate independently of traditional infrastructure. This innovation has the potential to significantly impact global sanitation. 

We are proud of this progress and remain dedicated to our ambitious goal of improving the lives of 100 million people through safe sanitation and hygiene by 2025.”

For more about the latest progress of our activities in Bangladesh, click here.
To learn more about LIXIL’s impact, visit here.

1 As of the end of FYE2024 (March 31, 2024)

2 Basic sanitation is the use of improved facilities which are not shared with other households and where excreta are not safely managed. If the excreta from improved sanitation facilities are not safely managed, then people using those facilities are classed as having a basic sanitation service.
(Reference: https://washdata.org/monitoring/sanitation)

3 Results attributed to the USAID-LIXIL PBL partnership through global and country level activities. Specifically, the number of people reached with basic sanitation and hygiene products as a result of the partnership during USAID Fiscal Years 2023 and 2024.