Realising the potential for waste to be transformed into a resource provides great opportunities to drive sustainable sanitation initiatives. Lyla Mehta, Andrés Hueso González, Alan Nicol and Ben O’Donovan-Iland consider the challenges and opportunities.
More than half the world’s population live in urban areas. Many growing towns and cities, especially in the Global South, are marked by inadequate sanitation, sewage and drainage facilities. With 3.5 billion people still lacking access to safe sanitation, most national and global sanitation drives have tended to focus on toilet construction, sewer connections and hardware. These have often ignored the second and third generation challenges of sanitation concerning water contamination, poor faecal sludge management, gender, equity and sustainability.
Yet, these challenges can also be an opportunity. Human waste is rich in water, nutrients and organic compounds, but, usually, this mostly goes down the drain. The increase of extreme weather events, water shortages, and weak infrastructure mean that ‘flush and forget’ systems are not always possible or desirable in off-grid settings. This is why the project ‘Towards Brown Gold’ sought to understand the potential for reuse of faecal waste and how marginalised communities experience sanitation in five rapidly urbanising areas across four countries: Nanded and Alleppey, India; Mekelle, Ethiopia; Wa, Ghana; and Gulariya, Nepal. The research was both inter- and trans-disciplinary, seeking to integrate the social sciences, engineering, microbiology and creative arts to understand the socio-political, technical, cultural and microbial processes and contexts of sanitation and waste processes.
A springboard for progress
Northern European countries have been piloting new approaches at increasing scale. According to the Toilet Board Coalition, the sanitation crisis can enable innovation and provide resources for a trillion-dollar global industry. In India alone, the predicted market for waste recovery and reuse is as large as $9–28 billion.
Contextual challenges
Despite this potential, the ‘Towards Brown Gold’ project found that the challenges of resource recovery from human waste might have been underestimated. The potential for reuse was found to be limited by the combined challenges of the existing sanitation infrastructure, pervasive cultural perceptions, a lack of cross-sector collaboration, and a narrative that exaggerates the benefits of the circular sanitation economy and endorses a market driven approach to sanitation.
Moreover, for reuse efforts to be successful and perceived as relevant by communities, they need to happen in a context of high sanitation coverage or come with a wider push to ensure everybody has access to sanitation. In reality, access to safely managed sanitation services was found to be lagging across the countries studied. Progress is particularly slow among groups marginalised because of their caste, class, gender and migration history.
Sanitation progress is often hampered by insufficient resources that are skewed towards centralised sewered systems, unclear roles and responsibilities, and poor intersectoral collaboration across water, health, urban and rural development.
Steps to success
The policy brief from the ‘Towards Brown Gold’ research project highlights six ways decision-makers can realise the potential for resource recovery from human waste and accelerate progress towards universal, safely managed sanitation in rapidly urbanising areas:
Make safely managed sanitation a political priority
National and urban level governments need to create, reform and implement policies, strategies and regulations to ensure there is sufficient funding and resources so that everybody has access to a toilet at home, and that faecal waste is managed in a way that protects public health and the environment. Acknowledgment of the global prevalence of non-sewered systems is central to the revision of policies and plans. Particular attention should be put on reaching and involving communities and residents who are poor and marginalised by society, such as those living in informal settlements.
Facilitate inclusive sanitation planning
Urban planners and policymakers need to address the multifaceted challenges of sanitation in an inclusive way, recognising the historical and social contexts of sanitation issues, and how communities who are marginalised experience sanitation. These communities’ voices and demands must be central to the planning process, and to holding authorities and service providers to account.
Protect the rights of sanitation workers
Governments need to properly recognise the crucial roles of sanitation workers – those emptying septic tanks and pits, unblocking sewers or operating treatment plants – in keeping sanitation services running and their towns and communities clean and liveable. Recognising their work includes protecting their rights to fair wages, social security, safety at work and self-organisation (such as with unions). Sanitation efforts must always include the health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers, both formal and informal.
Cautiously promote the circular sanitation economy
Reusing treated faecal waste, such as for irrigation or as compost, has positive impacts for the economy, the environment and climate change mitigation and adaptation. This circular sanitation economy can help accelerate progress, but overselling its benefits can be counterproductive, undermining the message that public investment is critical to ensure sanitation services for all. The promotion of the circular sanitation economy should instead be: realistic about the benefits and the many challenges involved; aware of community priorities; and integrated into a wider sanitation push to close any gaps in access to toilets and to address the whole sanitation service chain.
Ground reuse efforts in the context
Those designing and leading sanitation circular economy initiatives should ensure that their efforts are grounded in local, economic, social and cultural contexts. This includes considering economic aspects such as where farmers buy compost, or whether other product types could be more profitable. This should also include social aspects such as cultural perceptions of waste, or how to effectively raise awareness of the benefits of reuse. Engaging an interdisciplinary team is an effective way of doing this, combining natural and social sciences, as well as art-based approaches to community engagement.
Reform policy to enable reuse
Decision-makers need to invest in understanding and improving the enabling environment for sanitation in general, and reuse in particular. Policies and regulations should create positive incentives to reuse and eliminate existing barriers.
Overall, there is a need for policy and political reimagination to radically consider alternative models and increase financial allocations and commitments to safely managed sanitation solutions that are sustainable and inclusive for all.
More information
The authors:
Lyla Mehta is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and a Visiting Professor at Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences; Andrés Hueso González is senior policy analyst – sanitation at WaterAid; Alan Nicol is principal researcher at the International Water Management Institute; and Ben O’Donovan-Iland is communications and impact officer at the Institute of Development Studies
