WBB Home

 Ecosanitation:  What, Why, and How

What is ecosanitation?

Ecosanitation is a new way of looking at sanitation.  It treats human waste as a resource, and seeks to reintegrate sanitation with agriculture in a safe way, in order to reduce disease and improve low-income farmers’ access to high-quality fertilizer.  It also looks at reducing waste of water, recharging ground water, and ensuring that people’s need for water is met in a sustainable manner.

Why is ecosanitation important?

Ecosanitation came about as a response to the many problems with conventional sanitation, and a realization that the problems with conventional sanitation are not due to minor faults in its implementation, but rather in the whole way conventional sanitation approaches the issue of dealing with waste.

Under conventional sanitation, human waste is considered just that, waste:  something dirty to remove far from sight.  Waste removal involves using vast quantities of potable water, and mixing a small amount of human waste with large quantities of essentially clean water (the water to flush toilets, as well as water from bathing, washing clothes, and kitchen work).  Rainwater is ignored as a resource, often entering drains and being mixed with sewage, thus polluting it and making it unfit for human use.  Since much sewage is not properly treated, it goes on to pollute low-income neighborhoods and rivers, where the waste is dumped.  The high costs of the system make it unavailable to low-income neighborhoods, with government expenditures on sanitation amounting to subsidies for the rich.

When considering the problem of using clean water to flush toilets, it is important to understand the magnitude of the problem:

1.      An estimated 2.2 million people, most of them children under age five, die each year from illnesses caused by contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene.

2.      Almost half of the world’s population, or 2.6 billion people, lack access to adequate sanitation and wastewater treatment facilities.

3.      Around the world, 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.

4.      In low-income countries, much urban wastewater—65% in Asia and 100% in Africa—is not treated properly.

5.      Polluted water causes 80% of all diseases and 25% of all deaths in low-income countries.

Simply put, “Clean drinking water is too precious a resource to be flushed down the toilet, and the use of flush toilets in areas where the water supply only operates for a few hours per week clearly makes no sense.”  The inability to reach a majority of the population with a safe sanitation system, and the resulting illnesses and deaths; the waste of clean water; and the waste of the nutrients contained in human waste, all point to the need of an alternate way of thinking about sanitation.

What is different about ecosanitation?

Unlike conventional sanitation systems, ecosanitation deals with sanitation as a cycle, rather than a linear process.  Conventional sanitation involves the preparation of chemical fertilizers, the use of water to flush waste, and the dumping of (often untreated) waste.  Ecosanitation, on the contrary, regards human excreta and household water as resources rather than waste; in the process, it restores rather than reduces groundwater levels, and greatly reduces the need to use additional fertilizer.  As “wastes”, including water, are fed back into the system rather than being dumped, the cycle is closed, and as a result, several benefits ensue.

What does ecosanitation actually involve?

While ecosanitation is a philosophy rather than a specific set of practices, some common principles or methods apply.  These include:

1.      Separating different substances at the source:  toilets generally contain two or three separate compartments for urine, excreta, and (for South Asia) rinse water; similarly, graywater (from showers, washing, etc.) is collected separately, as is rainwater and organic waste.

2.      Treating each of the substances as a resource:  using urine as liquid or dry fertilizer; excreta as biogas or for soil improvement; graywater for irrigation, groundwater recharge, or direct reuse; rainwater for water supply or groundwater recharge; and organic waste for soil improvement or biogas.

As a result, the use of water can be greatly diminished, the nutrients in human waste can be put to use in agriculture or for biogas generation, and groundwater levels can be increased and more water made available for irrigation.  Low-income farmers can thus obtain improved yields without large expenditures on fertilizers, low-income families can access high-quality sanitation services, and illness and death from diseases related to poor sanitation can fall markedly.

While ecosanitation is a relatively new concept, it is being implemented in many countries and cultures.  Various problems regarding its acceptance have already been addressed, and in many situations, it is proving an extremely effective way to resolve a number of interconnected problems.  Although it is of particular importance for low-income countries, many European and Scandinavian countries are also implementing ecosanitation systems, demonstrating that there is international interest and demand for a more ecological approach to sanitation, one which will involve far fewer costs and far more benefits than the current approach.

Note:  All statistics in this document are from GTZ, Capacity Building for Ecological Sanitation, Concepts for ecologically sustainable sanitation in formal and continuing education. UNESCO, Paris, 2006.  For more information, see www.gtz.de/ecosan

Reference

[1] Source:  GTZ, Capacity Building for Ecological Sanitation, Concepts for ecologically sustainable sanitation in formal and continuing education. UNESCO, Paris, 2006.  For more information, see www.gtz.de/ecosan