Habitat for Humanity-Vanuatu (HFHV) recently completed its first rural housing project near Club Hippique.

The home, which includes innovations such as a smokeless stove, composting toilet and rainwater collection tank, was the seventh home for the disabled constructed in a partnership between HFHV and Lion's Club that began in 2001.

HFHV National Director Loucine Hayes said composting toilets are an environmentally friendly technology well-suited to rural areas. They cost about one-third the cost of a traditional flush toilet and are non-polluting and sustainable. The toilet contains two waste collection chambers below it. The first chamber remains closed, and the other is left open to collect waste. After six months, the second chamber is closed and the first chamber is then opened to collect waste.

After a few months, the waste in the second chamber has decomposed and can be removed. It can then be safely discarded or even used as mulch on a garden. Best of all, it doesn't pollute the water as septic tanks can. Composting toilets are also relatively odorless if properly maintained.

"This technology makes a lot of sense in Vanuatu, especially in rural areas where water sources are limited and close to where people live," Hayes said.

The smokeless stove, another component of the Club Hippique rural home, is basically an outdoor oven with a smokestack to vent smoke away from the area. Because so many families in Vanuatu, even in urban areas where it is supposedly not permitted, use wood fires to cook on, smokeless stoves make sense because they vent toxic fumes away from women, who do most of the cooking. They are also more efficient because they hold heat better, and they only cost about 5000 vatu to build.

The HFHV-Lion's home construction project for the disabled partnership will continue, Hayes said. For one of the seven homes already built, Port Vila Lions Club gave 100 percent funding and Noumea, New Caledonia, Lions Club provided funding for a second home. For three houses, including the recently completed seventh home, 50 percent of funding came from Lions Club International Foundation. Port Vila Lions Club and Habitat for Humanity provided 25 percent each for those three homes.