(One of the thought provoking articles)
1.An Eco-san separating pan
2.Tin drum for faeces and barrel for urine collection
Ask any water supply board engineer and he will tell you that the bigger headache is sewage management and not water supply. Statistics will also show that almost all of India has access to water supply –of varying quantity and quality no doubt- but far too few have access to good sanitation.The Millennium Development Goal adopted by the UN in September 2000 and of which India is a signatory seeks to halve the number of people without access to sanitation by 2015. That means India will have to build at least half of 115 million toilets to cover half of 78% of our rural population and 24% of its urban population un-served sanitation units by the year. A huge task indeed.Typical sanitation solutions have included the septic tank or simply a pit latrine. Both tend to pollute ground water and are environmentally unsatisfactory. Even in water resource rich area like Goa or Kerala inadequate sanitation has ended up contaminating ground water to such an extent that many wells are unusable. Sanitation and water supply are inextricably linked. If it is not ‘fouling the nest’ it is the unavailability of water which has made many toilets unusable in rural area. If you do not have water to drink will you use it for a toilet?On the other hand area wide underground sewerage systems with treatment facilities are difficult to provide and are costly ventures. They tend to be energy consuming and generally do not work satisfactorily. For scattered houses in outlying areas of cities, in villages, in places with a high water table and in hard rock area technically appropriate solutions are either not available or are costly to implement.In such a scenario one emerging solution is a dry composting toilet. A composting toilet collects human waste and converts it to a fertilizer resource for plant growth without polluting water bodies or groundwater.The urine separating WC’s are available not only in the Indian type but also in the European type. These toilets are being used in individual houses as well as flats.Eco-san alternatives are coming up in many places in the world including Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the USA, China and Sri Lanka to name a few. India too has its Eco-san heroes in Dr Bindeshwar Pathak of the Sulabh movement and Paul Calvert in Trivandrum, Kerala.
For more information:
S.Vishwanath and Chitra Vishwanath
1.An Eco-san separating pan
2.Tin drum for faeces and barrel for urine collection
Ask any water supply board engineer and he will tell you that the bigger headache is sewage management and not water supply. Statistics will also show that almost all of India has access to water supply –of varying quantity and quality no doubt- but far too few have access to good sanitation.The Millennium Development Goal adopted by the UN in September 2000 and of which India is a signatory seeks to halve the number of people without access to sanitation by 2015. That means India will have to build at least half of 115 million toilets to cover half of 78% of our rural population and 24% of its urban population un-served sanitation units by the year. A huge task indeed.Typical sanitation solutions have included the septic tank or simply a pit latrine. Both tend to pollute ground water and are environmentally unsatisfactory. Even in water resource rich area like Goa or Kerala inadequate sanitation has ended up contaminating ground water to such an extent that many wells are unusable. Sanitation and water supply are inextricably linked. If it is not ‘fouling the nest’ it is the unavailability of water which has made many toilets unusable in rural area. If you do not have water to drink will you use it for a toilet?On the other hand area wide underground sewerage systems with treatment facilities are difficult to provide and are costly ventures. They tend to be energy consuming and generally do not work satisfactorily. For scattered houses in outlying areas of cities, in villages, in places with a high water table and in hard rock area technically appropriate solutions are either not available or are costly to implement.In such a scenario one emerging solution is a dry composting toilet. A composting toilet collects human waste and converts it to a fertilizer resource for plant growth without polluting water bodies or groundwater.The urine separating WC’s are available not only in the Indian type but also in the European type. These toilets are being used in individual houses as well as flats.Eco-san alternatives are coming up in many places in the world including Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the USA, China and Sri Lanka to name a few. India too has its Eco-san heroes in Dr Bindeshwar Pathak of the Sulabh movement and Paul Calvert in Trivandrum, Kerala.
For more information:
S.Vishwanath and Chitra Vishwanath
Phone: 080-23641690.
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