Renewed research call for faecal sludge secondary treatment options in Bangladesh

IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:

Faecal sludge secondary treatment technologies for challenging settings

This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.

The planned duration of the faecal sludge research project will be 18 months.

The anticipated cost of the project is EUR 325,000. In addition there is EUR 50,000 available for piloting. (Separate budget needs to be included for this).

To download the guidelines and application form go to: www.irc.nl/page/73136

The deadline for submission of full proposal application forms is: 11 January 2013.

Future research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.

Please do not send requests for information or applications to the Sanitation Updates blog.

Conference explores faecal sludge management, a key link to up-scaling sanitation

Getting ready to access the pit for emptying, eThekwini , South Africa. Photo: Elisabeth von Muench, SuSanA

Since many experts believe that flush toilets and sewerage are unaffordable for the large majority urban and rural communities, faecal sludge management (FSM) is seen as a key link to up-scaling sanitation.

But do we need to reinvent the toilet or invent a sanitation industry? That was the concluding thought of Water for People’s Steven Sugden, one of the 100 or so presenters at the Second International Faecal Sludge Management conference (FSM2). Looking at all the presentations, the impression you get is that we need both better technologies and better business models.

FSM2 ook place in Durban, South Africa from 29-31 October 2012. The conference was structured around the following themes:

• On-site Sanitation as a Business
• Socio-political Aspects of On-site Sanitation
• Understanding On-site Sanitation
• Toilet Design for FSM Optimisation
• Pit Emptying – What are the Options?
• The How of Faecal Sludge Treatment
• Waste Not Want Not – Beneficial Use of Faecal Sludges
• Technology and Innovation
• Health Aspects of Faecal Sludges

All the presentations are available on the SuSanA website.

Rwanda, Kigali: more connections to sewerage system planned

Kigali Eco-Toilet. Photo: Eugene Dusingizumuremyi / SuSanA

The capital city of Rwanda has turned a delay in funding into an opportunity to revise its plans so that more areas get connected to a new centralised sewerage system. Construction of a US$ 70 million wastewater treatment plant in Giti Cyinyoni, Nyarugenge District, was due to start in 2012 but has been delayed by one year.

The lack of a centralised sewage system in Kigali (pop. 1 million) has been forcing real estate developers to provide onsite sewerage systems for new housing units. Schools, hospitals and other public buildings are already required by law to have their own sewerage systems. In future all these onsite systems will be connected to the new centralised system.

In 2008, according to a survey, 80% of the people in Kigali still used pit latrines [1]. These have proved to be not only hard to maintain, but also expensive to manage in the long run. That’s why the city council recently passed a bylaw that instructs developers to install flush toilets connected to septic tanks.

[1] Hohne, A., 2011. State and drivers of change of Kigali’s sanitation : a demand perspective : paper presented at the East Africa practioners workshop on pro-poor urban sanitation and hygiene, Laico Umbano Hotel, Kigali, Rwanda, March 29th – 31st 2011 . [online] The Hague, The Netherlands: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available at: <http://www.irc.nl/page/64586>

Related website: Kigali City – Water and Sanitation Programmes

Source:

• Susan Babijja, City Council reviews sewage management plan, New Times, 26 Oct 2012
• Rwanda: Kigali sewage system delayed by funds, Rwanda Express /  allAfrica.com, 14 Jun 2012
• Eric Didier Karinganire, Sewage in Kigali still an issue of concern, Rwanda Focus, 09 Apr 2012

Fecal Sludge Management: A smelly but fruitful business!

Today, 2.1 billion people in urban areas use non-sewered (or on-site) sanitation facilities. While much of the work in rural areas is focused on creating and sustaining open defecation free communities and generating demand for communities to construct toilets, the downstream activities of collecting and transporting fecal sludge present a unique challenge for urban residents. These services are mostly provided by private operators, and are generally uncontrolled and unregulated. The inadequate disposal of fecal sludge in the environment represents a direct threat to public health and negates the positive outcomes from behavioral change and improvements in sanitation access.

The urban population in developing countries, and in particular the poor, rely on fecal sludge collection and transportation services that are often not affordable.  In addition, pit emptying is often done by hand, exposing the operators to serious health risks (see figure below). Often mechanical emptiers, using vacuum trucks, charge excessive fees to customers but do not pay taxes or comply with laws and standards due to a general lack of regulation for these services. This makes it a highly profitable business. For example an emptying service provider in Abuja makes US$ 15,000 per month.

Manual emptier in Senegal, also called Baay Pelles

Gates Foundation announces new round of grants for on-site sanitation

The Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is inviting innovators to send letters of inquiry for round 3 of the Reinvent The Toilet Challenge.

Successful applicants will receive grants to design, prototype and test on-site, self-contained sanitation modules for individual families or neighbourhoods. Self-contained means no connections to piped water, sewerage or energy (electricity/gas) utility services. with Capital and operational costs should not exceed US$ 0.05/user/day. Designs should be able to deal with sanitary products like paper, cloth, sand, and other personal hygiene products and chemicals.

There is a two-step application process:

1. submission of a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) in the form of a 5 page concept note by  8 November 2012, 11:00pm PST
2. eligible applicants will be requested to submit a full proposal

For the full call, submission guidelines and online application go to:

www.gatesfoundation.org/watersanitationhygiene/Pages/loi-round3-reinvent-toilet-challenge.aspx

The business of the honey-suckers in Bengaluru (India) – new IRC publication

A new IRC paper explores some contributions being made by honey-sucker tanker operators — that renders a small-scale sanitation service informally and within the private sector — on waste (faecal) extraction and, in some cases, reuse. Operating outside the legal framework of waste management, this paper provides preliminary insight into the limitations and potentials of the ‘honey-sucker business’ as a sanitation service model, based on selected experiences in Bengaluru (India).

Living without sanitary sewers in Latin America

Rojas, F. (2012). Living without sanitary sewers in Latin America – The business of collecting fecal sludge in four Latin American cities. World Bank, Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), Latin America and the Caribbean.

• Full text

The present report spotlights the major challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead in fecal sludge management and summarizes the findings from four case studies that describe the current and potential market for sludge removal, collection, and disposal in peri-urban areas. These areas,
inhabited by a variety of ethnic, religious, and cultural groups,
typically struggle with high population density, insufficient land use planning, high citizen insecurity, and low coverage with basic services.

The report demonstrates how technical, financial, environmental, social, regulatory, political, and institutional factors interact to create supply and demand in four markets where coverage with sanitary sewerage services is below the regional average, namely: Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Guatemala City (Guatemala), Tegucigalpa (Honduras), and Managua
(Nicaragua).

Even though households in the four areas studied have onsite sanitation systems (latrines and toilets), fecal sludge and excreta often drain into the streets, and there is no control or treatment of the sludge, posing a risk for public health and the environment.

George Washington University – Global Partnerships for Healthy Homes Initiative

The Global Partnerships for Healthy Homes Initiative (GPH2I) is a multi-disciplinary research initiative launched by the Institute for Corporate Responsibility in partnership with The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services and Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. It brings together faculty and students from the three schools to conduct research in developing and managing innovative approaches to environmental health issues.

• GPH2I Brochure, pdf

OUR VISION – GPH2I aims to help develop healthy living GPH2I environments – including access to safe water, low-cost sanitation, improved hygiene, and reduced indoor air pollution – through the integration of research and action. Our goal is to maximize disease prevention and quality of life in communities and households through carefully researched and designed interventions that result in benefits that persist beyond the life of projects.

OUR APPROACH - GPH2I uses applied public health, business and GPH2Ipolicy research to develop, test and evaluate holistic and multi-disciplinary interventions, which include public and private sector actors. With our combined expertise in environmental health, business model, and impact evaluation, our approach integrates action across a variety of factors that affect the health and quality of life of households and communities. This integrated approach allows us to address environmental health challenges effectively.

Illustrative research questions include:

• How to measure household willingness to pay and quantify household preferences for public health goods and services?
• How to design incentive structures to improve uptake and use of public health goods and services?
• How to design cross-subsidies and alternative financing to reach vulnerable households when direct cost recovery is infeasible?
• How to monitor and evaluate market-based intervention approaches?
• How to design effective public private partnerships?• How to monitor and evaluate impact of public private partnerships?

Treatment Wetlands – Sustainable Sanitation Practice, July 2012

Treatment Wetlands – Sustainable Sanitation Practice, July 2012 

• (Full text, pdf)

Natural wetlands have been used for wastewater treatment for centuries. In many cases, however, the reasoning behind this use was disposal, rather than treatment and the wetland simply served as a convenient recipient that was closer than the nearest river or other waterway. Constructed treatment wetlands are engineered systems designed and constructed to utilize the natural processes involving wetland vegetation, soils, and their associated microbial assemblages to assist in treating water. They are designed to take advantage of many of the same processes that occur in natural wetlands, but do so within a more controlled environment.

Constructed treatment wetlands (TWs) are a simple technology in construction as well as in operation and maintenance. They have a high buffer capacity for hydraulic and organic load fluctuations as well as a high robustness and process
stability. TWs are therefore a suitable technological solution for small villages and single households and are becoming more and more popular all around the world for treating different types of water. Currently, the estimated number of CW systems in Austria is more than 3000.

IRC research calls on BRAC WASH II Programme – extended to 31 Aug 2012

IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre is happy to announce two research calls in the field of sanitation:

1. Low-cost sanitation technologies for areas with high groundwater tables
2. Faecal sludge secondary treatment options

These calls are part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations. The other action research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.

1. Guidelines for research call on low-cost sanitation technologies for areas with high groundwater tables

• Application form for low-cost sanitation technologies

2. Guidelines for secondary treatment options for faecal sludge

• Application form for secondary treatment options for faecal sludge

Extended deadline for submission of full proposal application forms: 31 August 2012

Please do not send requests for information or applications to the Sanitation Updates blog.