Can International Nonsewered Sanitation Standards Help Solve the Global Sanitation Crisis?

Abstract

To address one of the most severe global challenges affecting human health and the environment, two new voluntary product standards (ISO 30500 and ISO 31800) for nonsewered sanitation systems (NSSS) and fecal sludge treatment units (FSTUs) have been developed and published. While providing stringent voluntary product requirements for the containment and the treatment of human excreta with safe outputs (air, liquids, and solids), ISO 30500 and ISO 31800 make the inextricable connections between environmental emission thresholds, technical innovations, and sustainability aspects of NSSS and FSTUs. The purpose of this feature is to discuss these connections.

Sanitation Criteria: A Comprehensive Review of Existing Sustainability and Resilience Evaluation Criteria for Sanitation Systems

“…Or, they could create a complete, universal list of sanitation indicators, similar to efforts in other fields, such as water resources, bioenergy, and sustainable development, that conducted harmonization efforts to identify universal lists of indicators to enable consistent evaluations. Creating a universal list of sanitation indicators has been discussed, , and ISO standards focused on sanitation performance have been recently developed . Universal indicators, implemented with either approach, could support and harmonize global monitoring efforts and help set global baselines and goals.…”

“…Creating a universal list of sanitation indicators has been discussed, 14,64 and ISO standards focused on sanitation performance have been recently developed. 64 Universal indicators, implemented with either approach, could support and harmonize global monitoring efforts and help set global baselines and goals. Given the limited resources for most sanitation systems and the need for context-specific sustainability assessments, efforts to create any universal list would benefit from future research that collects data on trade-offs in measurement effectiveness, reliability, and efficiency between different criteria and in different contexts.…”

Advancing the economic and environmental sustainability of the NEWgeneratorTM non-sewered sanitation system

“…The sustainability indicators considered in this study were costs (economic) and life cycle GHG emissions (environmental), but future sustainability analyses may also consider the broader sanitation social-ecological system (S-SES) that define sanitation technology as one component of a larger human-environmental system; 64 additional studies on these aspects are critical for sustained use of NSS technologies. [64][65][66][67][68][69] There are significant reductions in per capita cost which can be achieved by increasing the number of users without increasing the system's physical footprint, but the potential of this approach is heavily dependent on whether the system can maintain treatment performance at these higher loadings and would require further laboratory and field testing. Targeted improvements to components (lithium photovoltaic battery, lower cost housing), reduced sludge moisture content and frontend O&M ratio can provide significant cost rand GHG reduction when combined.…”

Financial Viability and Environmental Sustainability of Fecal Sludge Treatment with Pyrolysis Omni Processors

“…The development of thermal treatment systems has been accelerated through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet initiative. , Community-scale, non-sewered sanitation systems developed through this program have been coined Omni Processors (OPs). , From a technological standpoint, these community-scale fecal sludge management systems are marketed as optimized sludge treatment technologies leveraging thermal treatment to inactivate pathogens and recover energy from bodily waste . These systems are proposed to be equipped with remote monitoring and have limited requirements for on-site operators. − Additionally, design teams note that OPs can handle a variety of inputs (e.g., menstrual hygiene materials, municipal solid waste, and organic wastes), which can cause blockages in sewage collection systems and interfere with the performance of other fecal sludge management processes. , Undoubtedly, addressing sanitation goals through technology deployment should consider the critical challenges of stakeholder engagement and social acceptability; ,− nonetheless, costs, energy, and life cycle environmental impacts are three indicators that are potentially of urgent relevance to decision-makers.…”