Ecological Sanitation - Project Examples

Project Examples

Examples of ecosan projects can be found among others in the collection of project data sheets of gtz ecosan or on the Enhanced Global Map of ecosan activities by EcoSanRes. In the following some examples are given that underline the diversity of ecosan projects:

Guangxi province, China - large-scale project of urine diverting dehydration toilets The dissemination programme of ecological dry toilets for Hsinchu County, Guangxi province, one of the poorest provinces in China, started in 1997 with support of UNICEF, SIDA and the Red Cross and has been expanded to 17 provinces until the year 2003. By this year, the scale of the project had increased to approximately 685,000 toilet units – today more than one million double vault urine diversion dehydration toilets (UDDTs) are installed in rural areas of China.

In UDDTs, urine and faeces are collected separately: The urine is collected in the front and led by a plastic pipe to a storage canister from where it can be used as a fertilizer in agriculture, the faeces fall at the back in one of two ventilated storage chambers and are covered with ash for better dehydration. After about one year of storage the dried material can be removed and used as a soil conditioner in agriculture.

KfW, Frankfurt, Germany - vacuum toilets + greywater treatment The sanitation concept of the modern office building “Ostarkarde” of the KfW Bankengruppe in Frankfurt is based on a separate excreta and greywater collection. While urine and faeces are collected via vacuum toilets and a vacuum sewerage using much less water for flushing, the greywater from hand washing and kitchen is collected and treated separately in a compact activated sludge reactor combined with membrane filtration. The treated greywater is then reused for toilet flushing and cleaning water. The amount of greywater can be reduced by 76% by this cost-efficient system which could be one of the prior choices for sanitation systems of newly constructed office buildings.

Tanum Municipality in Sweden has introduced urine separation toilets to recover phosphorus.

Paul Calvert, a British engineer and boat builder, who has lived in southern India for long, has been working on the development of dry compost toilets in southern India for over a decade. Today, his group provides technology and hand-holding for different ecologically sustainable solid waste management systems, of which the primary model is the ecosan toilet. This toilet separates the solid waste and converts it into compost-fertilizer, while using the urine and black-water (used for washing after defecation) for kitchen gardens.

SOIL in Haiti built ecological dry toilets as part of the emergency relief effort following the 2010 Haiti earthquake. More than 20,000 Haitians are currently using SOIL ecological sanitation toilets and SOIL has produced over 400,000 liters of compost as a result. The compost is used for agricultural and reforestation projects. Similar project by UNDP and Earth Aid Finland has built composting toilets provided by Biolan in Haiti to fight cholera in to improve the general sanitary conditions.

Wherever the Need build ecosan facilities in various parts of the developing world. They predominantly work in Tamil Nadu (India), where the Tamil Nadu State Government provides subsidies for their work. Wherever the Need have also constructed ecosan in other parts of rural India, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Their ecosan projects have positively affected 50,000 people in the developing world.