Sustainable Sanitation - Recommendations To Make Current Sanitation More Sustainable

Recommendations To Make Current Sanitation More Sustainable

Some examples for improving present sanitation practices in the short-term:

• Pit latrines could be modified to be soil-composting latrines, thus requiring some wall reinforcement, made shallow (max 1-1.5 m) and maintained using daily soil additions; the pits would be periodically closed and covered with soil in order to allow for sanitization and composting prior to emptying and reuse in agriculture.
• Simple urinals with separate collector systems could be installed instead of using toilets and pit latrines for urination
• Flush toilets could be modified to use less water.
• Greywater could be source-separated from the blackwater from toilets thus simplifying its treatment and providing opportunities for reuse.
• Blackwater from toilets could be held in conservancy tanks instead of open septic tanks and cess pits and then emptied and transported to biogas fermentors; alternatively the toilets could be connected to biogas fermentors.
• Cess (or drainage) pits e.g. from pour-flush toilets could be equipped with a safety zone of additional filter material to prevent contamination of ground water.
• Toilets and especially any new toilets could be equipped with urine diversion in order to reduce primarily the nitrogen load to the environment.
• Above ground dry toilets with urine diversion could be installed in dry areas lacking water, rocky areas where pits are expensive to dig and areas with high water tables and flooding.