Sustainable sanitation is a sanitation system designed to meet certain criteria and to work well over the long-term. Sustainable sanitation systems consider the entire "sanitation value chain", from the experience of the user, excreta and wastewater collection methods, transportation or conveyance of waste, treatment, and reuse or disposal.[2] The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) includes five features (or criteria) in its definition of "sustainable sanitation": Systems need to be economically and socially acceptable, technically and institutionally appropriate and protect the environment and natural resources.[3]
The purpose of sustainable sanitation is the same as sanitation in general: to protect human health. However, "sustainable sanitation" attends to all processes of the system: This includes methods of collecting, transporting, treating and the disposal (or reuse) of waste.[2]
Increasingly, sustainable sanitation also involves the consideration of climate change related impacts on sanitation infrastructure and behaviour and the resilience of technologies and communities.[4]
- ^ BMGF (2015). Building demand for sanitation - a 2015 portfolio update and overview - Water, sanitation, and hygiene strategy, June 2015. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington, USA
- ^ a b Tilley, E., Ulrich, L., Lüthi, C., Reymond, Ph. and Zurbrügg, C. (2014). Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies. 2nd Revised Edition. Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Duebendorf, Switzerland
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:0was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Kohlitz, J. and Iyer, R. (2021) 'Rural Sanitation and Climate Change: Putting Ideas into Practice' Frontiers of Sanitation: Innovations and Insights 17, Brighton IDS, DOI: 10.19088/SLH.2021.002