Development of trash exclusion for mechanized pit latrine emptying

Portiolli, Giovanna F.; Rogers, Tate; Beckwith, Walter; Tsai, Jocelyn; ole-MoiYoi, Payan; Wilson, Noel; Reyes, Francis L. de los

doi:10.1039/d1ew00383f

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…The framework we described here can be applied to a range of possible improvements within the sanitation system. The emptying team can visualize and consider the health and safety of workers using typical or new technologies for emptying pit latrines, such as the Gulper (e.g., Thye et al, 2011;Balasubramanya et al, 2016), a pedal-powered Gulper (Chipeta et al, 2017), a screw auger (Rogers et al, 2014;Sisco et al, 2017); and a trash excluder (Portiolli et al, 2021). By developing new illustrations (frames or "cards") specific to these technologies and re-using the current illustrations, new storyboards can be developed.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable sanitation- how can we improve sanitation systems in the global south?

2023

Frontiers Research Topics

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Frontiers is more than just an open access publisher of scholarly articles: it is a pioneering approach to the world of academia, radically improving the way scholarly research is managed. The grand vision of Frontiers is a world where all people have an equal opportunity to seek, share and generate knowledge. Frontiers provides immediate and permanent online open access to all its publications, but this alone is not enough to realize our grand goals. Frontiers journal seriesThe Frontiers journal series is a multi-tier and interdisciplinary set of openaccess, online journals, promising a paradigm shift from the current review, selection and dissemination processes in academic publishing. All Frontiers journals are driven by researchers for researchers; therefore, they constitute a service to the scholarly community. At the same time, the Frontiers journal series operates on a revolutionary invention, the tiered publishing system, initially addressing specific communities of scholars, and gradually climbing up to broader public understanding, thus serving the interests of the lay society, too. Dedication to qualityEach Frontiers article is a landmark of the highest quality, thanks to genuinely collaborative interactions between authors and review editors, who include some of the world's best academicians. Research must be certified by peers before entering a stream of knowledge that may eventually reach the public -and shape society; therefore, Frontiers only applies the most rigorous and unbiased reviews. Frontiers revolutionizes research publishing by freely delivering the most outstanding research, evaluated with no bias from both the academic and social point of view. By applying the most advanced information technologies, Frontiers is catapulting scholarly publishing into a new generation. What are Frontiers Research Topics?Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers journals series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area.

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable sanitation- how can we improve sanitation systems in the global south?

2023

Frontiers Research Topics

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Using illustrated system analysis for qualitative risk assessment of emptying of pit latrines

Tsai

Wilson²,

Reyes³

2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Pit latrines as the primary means of sanitation for billions of people. Fecal sludge must be removed regularly when pit latrines fill up, and the workers who empty these latrines are essential service providers. Pit latrine emptying services and approaches are highly variable, ranging from highly trained teams using vacuum trucks with a suite of personal protective equipment to individuals with no protection using simple manual tools like buckets and shovels. While national governments and nonprofits endeavor to make pit latrine emptying safer, the people making day-to-day decisions such as local pit emptying associations, sanitation businesses, utilities, and local governments have limited resources to evaluate how different emptying practices vary in terms of risk. In this paper we describe the development of an open-source Illustrated System Analysis tool for the fecal sludge management community. This tool can be used in conjunction with a simple risk assessment matrix to help decision makers describe, compare, and prioritize risks for mitigation. We demonstrate this process by outlining how a pit emptying team can compare mechanical and manual emptying with respect to ingestion of fecal material and inhalation of fecal bioaerosols. Illustrated System Analysis can be a tool to analyze fecal sludge management systems, and the associated challenges and opportunities so that they could be understood and referenced by the wider public and used to spark innovation. We provide a library of graphics freely under creative commons.

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“…When properly designed and managed (e.g., fecal sludge is treated and disposed of safely), pit latrines can contribute to meeting the aspirations of Sustainable Development Goal 6. These pits vary in volume and depth, may be lined or unlined, and filled with a variable combination of excreta, anal cleansing material, flush water, and trash [2][3][4]. Once pits are full, the fecal sludge must be removed, transported, and treated/reused, unless there is space to safely cover and abandon a pit latrine in place and construct a new one [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial community function and bacterial pathogen composition in pit latrines in peri-urban Malawi

Smith,

Risk,

Holm

et al. 2023

PLOS Water

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Despite the widespread global reliance on pit latrines as improved sanitation systems, the decomposition of waste within pit latrines is poorly understood. One area needing elucidation is the characterization and function of microbial communities within pit latrines. To address this gap, we characterized the microbial communities of 55 lined pit latrines at three sampling layers from two communities in peri-urban Malawi. The microbial communities of the fecal sludge samples were analyzed for beta diversity, pathogen presence, and functional profiling. Household surveys were conducted and used to compare microbial community patterns to household characteristics and pit latrine use patterns. Compared to activated sludge, anaerobic digestion in municipal wastewater systems, and human gut microbiomes, pit latrines were found to contain unique microbial communities. While the microbial community composition as a whole did not vary by sampling depth, pathogen composition varied by sampling depth, location, and household water source. The inferred microbial function also varied by depth (e.g., increase in methanogens and decrease in aerobes with depth). The richness of lined pit latrines determined from surface samples from eight latrines was found to be representative for a given area. Samples from middle and lower depths collected using a Gulper pump did not provide more information on richness, a result that informs future sampling designs. These findings are important for improving waste-based epidemiology (WBE) approaches to understand community health and waste degradation characterization of lined pit latrines.

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Development of trash exclusion for mechanized pit latrine emptying

Abstract: The trash-excluding attachment (Excluder) can be connected to a custom vacuum (such as the Flexcrevator), a vacuum truck, or a sludge pump. The system allows the mechanized emptying of pit latrines with high levels of trash without manual “fishing”.

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

Sustainable sanitation- how can we improve sanitation systems in the global south?

Sustainable sanitation- how can we improve sanitation systems in the global south?

Using illustrated system analysis for qualitative risk assessment of emptying of pit latrines

Microbial community function and bacterial pathogen composition in pit latrines in peri-urban Malawi

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