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Session Report Cover Sheet
SESSION CODE: SANI - 17
Name of Convener(s): Stockholm Environment Institute / EcoSanRes
DATE:
17 - March, 2003
Session
Title:
Ecological
Sanitation
–Progress being Made Around the world:
What is ECOSAN and what is being done
generally?
Accommodation: Gimmond Hotel
Contact information
Contact No.: 090 7812 5129
in Japan
Contact E-mail: [email protected]
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Session Report
SESSION CODE: SANI - 17
Reporter/Rapporteur: Mayling Simpson-Hebert, Paul Calvert
Contact E-mail : [email protected]
1. Key Issues

Virtually all existing sanitation today is unsustainable, is polluting and spreads disease.
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This means that the current sanitation crisis is far bigger than most people realize.
We must add to the 2,4 billion unserved some 3 billion who use pit toilets flush toilets
and sewers.

Conventional sanitation (pitlatrines, flush toilets and sewage systems) fails to prevent
disease, fails to recycle nutrients and consumes and pollutes water resources.

Ecological sanitation is an alternative approach to conventional sanitation. It is not a
single technology but rather a holistic approach involving keeping human excreta out of
water, containing and destroying pathogens, and recycling nutrients to agriculture. It
includes such components as urine diverting toilets, soil composting toilets, non-flush
toilets.

Ecosan is far more effective in pathogen containment and destruction than
conventional sanitation approaches.
2. Actions

Promotion of Ecological Sanitation within the context of reaching the Millennium Goals
(Contributing significantly to the 100,000 toilets required per day for the next 12 years)


Financing of large-scale urban and rural ecological sanitation applications.
Education of the water and sanitation sector professionals, political leaders and
communities.

Capacity building including increasing the number of people who can implement
ecological sanitation systems in rural and urban areas.

Global programme for recycling phosphorus from urine and soil.
3. Commitments
GTZ (Germany), Sida(Sweden), UNDP, Water and Sanitation Program (World Bank), City
of Kyoto, Government of Uganda and UNEP expressed their long-term commitments to
ecosan development.
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4. Database

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It was questioned whether ecosan is economical.
In fact it is less costly than conventional approaches.
It reduces the requirement for artificial (chemical) fertilizer.
It reduces health costs through containment and sanitization.
Reduces waste water and treatment costs, prevents environmental damage and the
associated remedial costs.
 Ecosan pays for itself.
5. Innovations


Ecosan represents a paradigm shift in the entire approach to sanitation.
It means that there is true containment, sanitization and recycling – something that
does not exist in today’s sanitations systems

It deals with the relationship between humans and soil – a cultural and behavioural
change

Urine diversion toilets represent a major innovation that can be applied to present
sanitation systems. Urine contains 80% of the nutrients leaving the body and by not
mixing it with faeces, can be used directly as a fertilizer in agriculture. Keeping faecal
material separate allows for economical treatment systems using dehydration and soil
composting to reduce pathogens prior to recycling.

Nutrient recycling through ecosan systems reduces the amount of phosphorus to be
extracted from the earth’s crust. Phosphorus is a limited mineral andcheap reserves
will be depleted within 60 –130 years.
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