Waterless urinals: a proposal to save water and recover urine nutrients in Africa

Waterless urinals have two important advantages compared to conventional water-flushed urinals: They save water and they allow the collection of undiluted urine, which – because of its nitrogen and phosphorus content is a valuable resource as fertiliser in agriculture. In the context of African developing countries, costs and maintenance requirements of waterless urinals need to be as low as possible. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of waterless (and odourless) urinals are now already in use worldwide, many municipalities are not yet aware of their existence or are reluctant to accept them as a viable option. This paper aims to reduce this knowledge gap by describing available models, odour control methods in waterless urinals (flat rubber tube, silicon curtain valve or sealant liquid), and the aspects to be considered regarding maintenance requirements and costs. Waterless urinals are a promising step towards achieving water saving, more sustainable sanitation and reduced dependency on costly artificial fertilisers, thus contributing to poverty reduction

Up-scaling lessons from the EU-Sida-GTZ Ecosan promotion project in Kenya

This paper analyses the requirements for up-scaling of sustainable sanitation systems based on the lessons learnt from the EU-Sida-GTZ EcoSan Promotion Project (EPP) in Kenya. The EPP reached 50,000 users with reuse oriented sanitation systems (ecosan). The project areas for urine diversion dehydration toilets (UDDTs) were villages in rural and peri-urban areas of Kenya where farming is practiced and cholera is common during the rainy season. The total number of installed UDDTs in households and schools was 984 with an estimated 20,000 users. The UDDTs were implemented either directly through Community Based Organisations (CBOs), or via the pro-poor basket fund called Water Services Trust Fund (WSTF) together with the regional Water Services Boards (WSBs) and CBOs. Future strategies for up-scaling must provide a comprehensive strategy to bundle resources and create synergies of the sanitation related sectors in Kenya with a focus on behaviour change and sanitation market development that can provide sustained demand and trigger community investment in sanitation

Tackling the urban waste and food crises simultaneously and sustainably - examples from the Philippines and Burkina Faso

The current urban population of 3.3 billion is expected to reach 5 billion by 2030. This urbanisation of the global population is equally an urbanisation of poverty. Cities concentrate people, huge volumes of excreta and nutrients from vast areas of farmland into a limited area. For the urban poor in particular, these accumulations result in major health problems and a low standard of living. In recent decades sanitation practitioners and researchers have been working on modern sanitation systems that address two related urban problems the waste and the food production problem. The approaches developed are usually considered under the term ecological sanitation (ecosan) and are based on recognising the value of nutrients as part of a sustainable wastewater management system. Two large-scale projects from the Philippines and Burkina Faso, are presented to illustrate the benefit to the urban poor offered by affordable ecosan alternatives in terms of sanitation and fertiliser production

Alternative solutions for challenging environments: a look at UNICEF-assisted ecosan projects worldwide

This paper summarises information from 20 UNICEF-assisted ecological sanitation projects in 12 countries. The projects varied widely in size from 95 users for a project with household urine diversion dehydration toilets (UDDTs) in Bangladesh up to 23,000 users under emergency conditions in Zimbabwe. They share characteristics of purpose, scope, challenges, opportunities and sanitation technologies, which were mainly UDDTs and composting toilets. Specific insights are given for the projects in Bangladesh and Rwanda where large-scale ecological sanitation „ecosan‟ programs are currently underway. We discuss the potential to scale-up initiatives by providing increased technical back-up support to users, greater linkages with community-led total sanitation and with income generation initiatives via higher agricultural yields. In the context of growing urbanisation and hydro-geological challenges, this paper highlights that “ecosan technologies” (such as UDDTs) can be a suitable technical solution where pit-based toilets are impossible to be implemented sustainably

Provision of sustainable sanitation in emergency situations: role of ecosan

This paper describes the potential of ecological sanitation (ecosan), and in particular of urine-diversion dehydrating (UDD) toilets, to provide sustainable excreta disposal in emergency situations in low-income countries. Three case studies of emergency sanitation were analysed: El Salvador (hurricane), Afghanistan (civil war) and Pakistan (earthquake). The analysis of these case studies has shown that the systems implemented in the long-term phase of the emergency were sometimes more sustainable than what was in place before the emergency occurred. For UDD toilets to be viable during emergency situations, specific criteria have to be in place. The essential criteria include awareness and expertise among aid agencies, ease of transportation and quick installation of standardised UDD units, stage and duration of emergency and the role of government in sanitation provision. For emergency situations in low-income countries, we propose the use of UDD toilets (e.g. with pre-fabricated urine-diversion squatting pans) as a suitable excreta management option, particularly in those instances where pit latrines are not sustainable in the longer term