Willingness among food consumers to recycle human urine as crop fertiliser: Evidence from a multinational survey

Simha, Prithvi; Barton, Melissa A.; Perez-Mercado, Luis Fernando; McConville, Jennifer; Lalander, Cecilia; Magri, Maria Elisa; Dutta, Shanta; Kabir, Humayun; Selvakumar, Albert; Zhou, Xiaoqin; Martin, Tristan; Kizos, Thanasis; Kataki, Rupam; Gerchman, Yoram; Herscu-Kluska, Ronit; Alrousan, Dheaya; Giap, Sunny Goh Eng; Elenciuc, Daniela; Głowacka, Aleksandra; Korculanin, Laura; Tzeng, Rongyu Veneta; Ray, Saikat Sinha; Niwagaba, Charles; Prouty, Christine; Mihelcic, James R.; Vinnerås, Björn

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144438

Cited by 39 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Our findings are consistent with those in a previous study in Southern India, where farmers who knew someone using human urine as fertilizer never thought it was a bad idea to use it on their own crops ( Simha et al, 2017 ). They are also in line with recent findings in a multinational survey, where social norms and cognitive awareness of the potential benefits and risks of urine reuse featured strongly in shaping respondents' attitudes to consuming urine-fertilized food ( Simha et al, 2020 ). However, our results differed from those of a survey conducted at a university in Southern India ( Simha et al, 2018 ), probably because of differences in the social environment.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Therefore, the factors that significantly affect use of human excreta-derived fertilizers appear to vary in different regions. This is confirmed by a recent global survey of 3763 people in 16 countries, which found that consumer willingness to eat food fertilized with human urine differs greatly by country and that the strongest predictive factors for overall acceptance are cognitive factors (perceptions of risks and benefits) and social norms ( Simha et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

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Poor awareness and attitudes to sanitation servicing can impede China's Rural Toilet Revolution: Evidence from Western China

Guo

Zhou

Simha

et al. 2021

Science of The Total Environment

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The ongoing Toilet Revolution in China offers an opportunity to improve sanitation in rural areas by introducing new approaches, such as urine source separation, that can contribute to achieving SDG6. However, few studies have systematically assessed the social acceptability of managing human excreta collected in new sanitation systems. Therefore, in this study we performed face-to-face interviews with 414 local residents from 13 villages across three provinces in western China, to analyze the current situation and attitudes to possible changes in the rural sanitation service chain. We found that the sanitation chain was predominantly pit latrine-based, with 86.2% of households surveyed collecting their excreta in a simple pit, 82% manually emptying their pits, and 80.2% reusing excreta in agriculture without adequate pre-treatment. A majority (72%) of the households had a generally positive attitude to production of human excreta-derived fertilizer, but only 24% agreed that urine and feces should be collected separately. Multivariate logistic regression indicated that three factors (level of education, number of permanent household residents, perceived social acceptability) significantly influenced respondents' attitudes to reuse of excreta, although only perceived social acceptability had a high strength of association. Overall, our survey revealed that rural households often misuse toilet systems, fail to comply with government-specified sanitation guidelines, have low awareness of alternative solutions, and are over-reliant on the government to fix problems in the service chain. Thus while new sanitation technologies should be developed and implemented, information campaigns that encourage rural households to manage their excreta safely are also important.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Poor awareness and attitudes to sanitation servicing can impede China's Rural Toilet Revolution: Evidence from Western China

Guo

Zhou

Simha

et al. 2021

Science of The Total Environment

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The perceived health risks span from the awful smell, skin infections, and other occupational hazards 82 . Socio-cultural factors, norms, religion, and taboos were also found to be barriers to human excreta use in previous studies 71 , 83 – 88 . On average, the farmers were moderately positive on whether human excreta should be disposed, confirming their moderate environmental consciousness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Behavioral intentions of rural farmers to recycle human excreta in agriculture

Gwara

Wale

Odindo

2022

Sci Rep

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Considerable progress has been made in developing human excreta recovery pathways and processes for maximum nutrient recovery and contaminant elimination. The demand segment has often been ignored as an area for future research, especially during the technology development. The findings from the few published articles on social acceptance show missing and inconclusive influence of demographic, sociological, and economic farmer-characteristics. This study endeavours to close this gap by using the social psychological theories, technology adoption theories and the new ecological paradigm to investigate the factors that influence the behavioral intentions of rural farmers to recycle human excreta in agriculture. Study findings show that social acceptance was driven by awareness, religiosity, income, source of income, and environmental dispositions. Perceived behavioral control represents a potential barrier to human excreta reuse. The study recommends the demographic, cultural, sociological, and economic mainstreaming of dissemination strategies of circular bioeconomy approaches within the context of agricultural innovation systems.

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“…There has been wide discussion in the literature on the economics and of selling compost derived from human compost and the difficulties posed by regulation (Diener et al 2014;Moya et al 2019a;Simha et al 2021). Sanergy is a good example of this, with the compost it produces limited to application for less-lucrative domestic crops (as permits for international crops remain bureaucratically opaque and expensive) (Sanergy interview).…”

Section: Efficient Collection Of Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

A qualitative study on resource barriers facing scaled container-based sanitation service chains

Ferguson

Mallory

Anciano

et al. 2022

Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development

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Container-based sanitation (CBS) is an increasingly recognised form of off-grid sanitation provision appropriate for impoverished urban environments. To ensure a safely managed and sustainable service, a managing organisation must implement a service chain that performs robustly and cost-effectively, even with an expanding customer base. These ‘CBS operators’ adopt varying approaches to achieve this objective. Following research including interviews with representatives from six current CBS operators, this paper presents a generalised diagrammatic model of a CBS service chain and discusses the three broad thematic challenges currently faced by these organisations. Supplying cover material is a universal problem with hidden challenges when taking advantage of freely available resources. There is no universally applicable approach for the efficient collection of faecal waste despite the high labour costs of waste collection. The best strategy depends on the CBS operator's overall expansion strategy and the location of fixed features within the served community. Although CBS is technically well-suited to being turned into new products within the circular economy, in practice, this requires a diverse range of skills from CBS operators and is hampered by slow growth in other organic waste recovery services and unhelpful regulation.

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Willingness among food consumers to recycle human urine as crop fertiliser: Evidence from a multinational survey

Cited by 39 publications

References 59 publications

Poor awareness and attitudes to sanitation servicing can impede China's Rural Toilet Revolution: Evidence from Western China

Poor awareness and attitudes to sanitation servicing can impede China's Rural Toilet Revolution: Evidence from Western China

Behavioral intentions of rural farmers to recycle human excreta in agriculture

A qualitative study on resource barriers facing scaled container-based sanitation service chains

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