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Evaluation of sanitary conditions in Kuje Market in Abuja, Nigeria with diverse cultural practices and provision of a Dry Ecological Toilet System

This paper presents the general sanitation practices by the traders in a major market in Kuje located in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja and our efforts in reorientating the market stakeholders towards the provision and use of a new dry sanitation toilet complex. The market is known for its diversity in Nigerian ethnicity, culture and the variety of goods and services. A novel toilet complex was designed and built which has the following features: 8 toilet units (4 each for male and female), urine diversion, a gender-segregated urinal, a urine storage tank, used menstrual absorbents disposal facility for women, bathing facility and a composting chamber for organic fertilizer production from the generated faecal matter and market wastes. The design also made provision for culturally sensitive persons to use a small spray of water for anal cleaning. There was provision for hand washing with soap. The respondents provided baseline information that enabled the design features through 5 Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and 2 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). This was followed by interviewed administered, semi-structured questionnaire which utilized a total sampling approach where the owners of all the 199 lock-up and open stalls in the market were enrolled and participated in the study. The mean age of the respondents was 34.3 ± 9.7 years and 55.8 % were females. The sources of water in the market were: hand dug well (11.7 %), borehole (37.6 %), water vendor (41.6 %) and sachet water (9.1 %). The market has three existing toilets that were mostly patronized by males. Due to poor maintenance of the existing toilets, women preferred open defecation and use of potty in their stalls, disposed with solid wastes. Most respondents (80.7 %) were willing to pay and use the newly built dry toilet in the market as they perceive aesthetics (28.9 %), cleanliness (21.8%) and disease prevention (6.6%) as major benefits. The toilet design serves as a model for other public institutions where sanitation is compromised. The market community owns, operates and maintains the facility and the user charges are levied for sustainability.

Faecal Sludge Management - WASH in Emergencies, Problem Exploration Report

During the immediate phase of an emergency in an urban context, the implementation of sanitation programmes takes a long time to provide suitable and sufficient facilities for the affected population. While the emergency response for drinking water programmes has been improved with the design of standardised, rapid deployment kits, sanitation programmes in urban areas are limited to very few technologies. The construction of pit latrines and the implementation of hygiene promotion programmes are the main activities carried out by humanitarian actors to address the challenges of open-air defecation. If left unaddressed, this can lead to serious public health problems and spread dangerous diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera. When deciding on key strategic factors such as the most appropriate number of toilets, the number of users per unit is essential. Sphere standards offer important guidance regarding these decisions. However, even if minimum standards are met the main challenge is that toilets, usually pit latrines, fill up very quickly and need to be emptied as soon as possible. Latrines that are not regularly emptied risk closure, increasing the pressure on remaining latrines to cope with the needs of the affected population. Afterwards, faecal sludge must be transported safely to a dumping site for disposal.Humanitarian actors tend to first use the supply capacity of the local market to find relevant construction materials to quickly implement pit latrines on the ground. The quality and speed of the sanitation response may vary greatly depending on whether one chooses dug-pit latrines (where construction materials are likely to be available locally) or the erection of portable toilets (where Import is often required). Nevertheless, if the local supply capacity for basic Equipment and materials is not adequate, this will significantly affect the sanitation coverage for the affected population. In addition to this, it is usually local contractors who undertake the response for de-sludging and transporting the faecal sludge to a dumping site. This means that the efficiency of the de-sludging activity and the efficacy of the faecal sludge disposal will often depend on the number of local sewer trucks available, their condition and their transport capacity. Therefore, the quality and the efficiency of sludge disposal can vary a lot from one situation to another. This is a key challenge as, if pit latrines are not emptied on a regular basis, people may resort to open-air defecation and contaminate their environment. Lastly, the existing dumping site may not be adequate to accept the large volume of faecal sludge collected from pit latrines on a regular basis and may become a source of contamination to the environment. Therefore, the dumping site has to be secured and improved to facilitate disposal. Despite the efforts of organisations such as WEDC, MSF and Oxfam to produce guidelines and books on standards for excreta management in an emergency, there is a lack of standardisation of safety protocols and equipment to strengthen the de-sludging, transporting and disposal of faecal sludge. Today, the majority of WASH actors are focused on the development and testing of sanitation solutions for emergencies that can improve the disposal of faecal sludge in a quicker and safer way. In addition, they are looking for concepts and products able to reduce the rate at which latrines fill-up with faecal sludge.For 15 years, experimental studies have tried to determine whether additives containing microorganisms were able to reduce faecal sludge. Despite inconclusive results, these technologies still have potential and should be studied with different experimental protocols using new and improved products. Such experiments are ongoing with UNHCR and the Emergency Sanitation Project (including partners such as WASTE in the Netherlands, IFRC, and Oxfam GB) and are showing positive, conclusive results. Currently, there is a lack of available equipment and technical guidelines on how to manage excreta in emergencies. More standardised and reliable concepts need to be developed to facilitate the implementation and management of sanitation programmes.Furthermore, the management of excreta during an emergency in an urban context has very limited options. This is because there is a lack of available space to implement suitable infrastructures for the users. Digging more pits and increasing the number of raised latrines on the ground may therefore become very difficult depending on the situation. This report puts forward a few areas for further exploration and development.

Fecal Sludge Management Tools - Diagnostic and cecision support tools

Urban sanitation remains a significant challenge for most low and middle income countries. The urban population of the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) more than tripled between 1990 and 2015. While access to sanitation in LDCs has increased in relative terms, in absolute terms the number of people using unimproved sanitation has increased. Under the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there is now a focus on the whole sanitation service chain from containment through to disposal. The challenge for urban sanitation under the SDGs is therefore not only to achieve universal access to toilets, but also that all excreta is safely managed along the whole sanitation service chain.

Forward osmosis of stored urine - Master thesis from the Pollution Research Group, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, South Africa)

Learnings from implementing the excreta flow diagram (SFD) process in Kumasi

Abstract:Excreta, Faecal or Shit Flow Diagrams (SFDs) are away to clearly represent how excreta flows along the sanitation service chain. This approach has already gaines popularity and many SFDs have already been produced. To date little attention has been paid to the methods and data used, or the credibility of the SFDs. The SFD Promotion Initiative has created a tool to enable the wieder roll-out of SFDs, which includes a credibility assessment. The product is a report on service delivery context with an embedded SFD. This briefing paper discusses the lessons learnt from trialling the tool and process developed through this initiative, in the city of Kumasi (Ghana). The most important lesson leanrt is that stakeholder engagement is critical not only for obtaining credible data, but also for validating the SFD produced.

Learnings from implementing the excreta flow diagram (SFD) process in Kumasi

Local Business Development Support for Introducing Privatized Emptying Services to the Chittagong Market

WSUP’s (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) project of “introducing privatized emptying services in Chittagong” is a scale-up of their previous project of public-private partnership for septic tank emptying services that began operations in Dhaka almost a year ago. The scale-up in Chittagong is targeting the procurement and implementation of two exhausting trucks via a sustainable business model. The current study is targeted at understanding if the Chittagong market can support an exhausting business, identifying potential business partners to run the business, and vetting the potential business models to identify key factors in reaching financial sustainability.

Making pathogen hazards visible: a new heuristic to improve sanitation investment efficacy

The public health objective of sanitation is to reduce the risk of negative health outcomes from faecal contamination. For water-based sanitation systems at the household and community scale as practised in Indonesia and perhaps elsewhere, the liquid component of the effluent comprises a significant pathogen hazard. While increasing attention is paid to managing the solid fraction, the hazard in the liquid fraction goes largely unnoticed and unmanaged. This paper proposes the means for a conceptual shift to a focus on the pathogen hazards that matter post-treatment, and where those hazards enter the environment, enabling improved local risk management. Firstly, the paper proposes exponential, rather than arithmetic, representations of pathogen number or concentration, because arithmetic representations of treatment efficacy wrongly suggest low cause for concern. Secondly, the paper introduces and applies the Pathogen Hazard Diagram, a new heuristic applicable at both the local and national scale, that requires only local knowledge and general sanitation reference knowledge to construct, but which can guide policy and action, direct monitoring, and improve the efficacy of sanitation investments.

Microfiltration/Ultrafiltration of stored Urine and Urine Diluted with Water - Master thesis from the Pollution Research Group, at the University of K...

Pipe Dream - Cleaning Ganga - Down to Earth Cover Story

Two flagship programmes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are working at cross-purposes. By 2019, when Swachh Bharat Mission comes to an end, some 30 million septic tanks and pits would have been dug along the Ganga. These tanks and pits would produce 180 Million litres of faecal sludge every day, which will eventually find its way into the Ganga, defeating Namami Gange. Its time the Central, state and local sanitation programmes recognised faecal sludge management as a priority to ensure a clean Ganga.

Resource Value Mapping (REVAMP): A tool for evaluating the resource recovery potential of urban waste streams

This discussion brief introduces a new tool being developed in the SEI Initiative on Sustainable Sanitation.There is increasing interest in the concept of the circular economy and “closing the loop” in our use of various vital resources – including water, energy and mineral resources. This is driven not only by an interest in reducing the social and environmental damage linked to resource extraction and waste disposal, but also in optimizing the use of resources in preparation for the end of the era of cheap oil and raw materials. While the focus has been largely on industry, the case for “closing the loop” in relation to wastewater, sanitation and food and other organic waste is becoming ever stronger.REVAMP is a tool being developed at SEI for quickly estimating, visualizing and valuing the resources that could be recovered from a city’s organic waste streams: sewage sludge, faecal sludge, and food and other organic solid waste. REVAMP can:• estimate the resources that could be recovered in various forms (such as plant nutrients, insect fat and protein, biogas);• estimate the total quantities of reuse products that could be produced;• estimate the potential revenues from different reuse products; and• compare the reuse options on the basis of energy content, nutrient content and potential revenues, to support decision-making on city sanitation and waste management plans.

Septage Management Leader’s Guidebook - Philippines Edition

The Septage Management Leader’s Guidebook, is a product of Oxfam through their program to improve sanitation in the super typhoon Haiyan devastation area of the central Philippines. The Manual presents a step-by-step strategy for scaling up septage management services more widely. The “Quick Start Guide” and the tools and checklists at the beginning of each step are designed to make the manual useful to anyone tasked with leading the effort to implement septage management programs for their city or municipality.

SFD Exchange Meeting - its use and potential in the sanitation sector - Presentation from the SFD Exchange Meeting at World Water Week 2016 in Stockh...

The SFD Promotion Initiative has been working over the past year to develop a consistent method and the tools for producing excreta flow diagrams, the SFD (also called Shit Flow Diagrams). SFD is a powerful visualization tool that summarizes and presents excreta flows from containment (user interface) to their final destination in a given city. The Initiative was introduced to the broader sanitation community during Stockholm World Water Week 2015 and has since then generated considerable interest and discussion on uses and potential of the tool for advocacy and planning for urban sanitation improvement.Different presentations on SFDs were held during the SFD Exchange Meeting prior to the World Water Week 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. All presentations are now available as individual PDF download. These presentations include:1) The linkages between SaniPath and SFD: How SaniPath can support actions after a finished SFD processby Suraja Raj (Emory University)2) Developing SFDs from Performance Assessment Data in Indiaby Dinesh Mehta (CEPT University)3) Adaption of the SFD concept on a national level to monitor safely sanitation and safe treatment of wastewaterby Barbara Evans (on behalf of WHO)4) Resource Value Mapping: Estimating the Potential for Resource Recovery from Productive Sanitation in Urban Areasby Kim Andersson (SEI)5) Improving urban water services in Chiang Mai, Thailand, using ECAM and SFDsby Astric Michels (GIZ - WaCClim)6) Faecal waste volume calculation: the experience of using the tool in two cities in Indonesiaby Ingeborg Krukkert (IRC)7) Drawing excreta flow diagrams and additional fluxes, combined with sanitation - the Simba# technical toolby Manfre Schuetze (IfaK e.V.)8) The Beaumont SFD Generator: A demonstration of the toolby Andrew Whitesell (Beaumong Design)9) SFD data to graphic converter tool by Barbara Evans (SFD Promotion Initiative)

SFD Exchange Meeting - its use and potential in the sanitation sector - Presentation from the SFD Exchange Meeting at World Water Week 2016 in Stockh...