Sludge Watch ==> World Toilet Assoc: Flush Toilets a Threat to Environment and Public Health

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

As global warming and profligate water use causes global water shortages 
even in the US and Canada, we must reconsider that awful technology: the 
flush toilet.  We use precious drinking quality water to move waste through 
a pipe.  We have no affordable way to get that water entirely clean again.

We visit this awful technology on countries that have little water to begin 
with and little ability for a high tech cleanup of sewer wastes.

We need to rethink our saniitation systems...or we will all be eating and 
drinking sewage wastes (with its industrial, hormonal, and pharmaceutical 
components.

.........................................



http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40205



ENVIRONMENT: 'Flush Out the Toilet From the 'Water-Cycle'
By Zofeen Ebrahim

Credit:Kyung Eun

Experts Mamit (left)and Gijzen (right) advocate an end to flush toilets.

SEOUL, Nov 25 (IPS) - The one message that came across at the just concluded 
general assembly of the World Toilet Association (WTA) was that conventional 
flush toilets are not only environment unfriendly but are also a serious 
public health hazard.

And while the United Nations estimates that 2.6 billion people are living 
without proper sanitation and without access to potable water, those using 
flush toilets are converting precious water into dangerous effluents.

Sanitation experts who gathered in the Korean capital for the assembly, that 
concluded on Sunday, called for a major paradigm shift and even a ‘back to 
nature’ approach to the disposal of human waste.

"We are on the wrong track," said Hubert J. Gijzen, a biotechnologist 
representing UNESCO’s Indonesian office.

Newer ways, all agreed, were needed to be developed to dispose human 
excreta. If flush toilets have to be used they must be redesigned to reduce 
water consumption, or else use recycled water.

‘’The current conventional sanitation systems will not be able to achieve 
the (United Nations’) Millennium Development Goal,’’ said lawmaker James D. 
Mamit from Malaysia, who is environment advisor to its state of Sarawak.

Ecologists are calling for a major sanitation reformation, along the concept 
of ‘EcoSan’ or ecological sanitation, that would contribute towards water 
conservation and mitigating surface and ground water pollution, thereby 
reducing the risk of water-borne diseases.

One of the technologies being widely advocated involves separation of 
faeces, urine and grey water, thereby minimising the volume of water needed 
to flush away excreta. Valuable nutrients are recovered, and the residual 
matter converted into biogas and used as fuel.

This rethinking would not only require innovation, research, training and 
awareness-raising but an abandonment of conventional water management while 
developing strategies that are effective, low-tech and low-cost as well.

Mamit suggests the inclusion of EcoSan concept at the policy level and 
suitable changes to existing legislations in many countries that favour 
conventional, centralised sanitary systems.

"It is understandable that these impacts were not foreseen at a time when 
the world population was only around one billion people, and global change 
pressures of today were not foreseen," said Gijzen. But with climate change, 
population explosion, major urbanisation, which has in turn led to informal 
settlements, the old method of removing human waste is not sustainable.

"No doubt water is life, but it is also a killer because we are 
contaminating our water," says Gijzen, adding that wastewater treatment was 
costly and still does not produce safe and pathogen-free effluents.

"In developing regions, effluents get dumped into water courses untreated 
due to the phenomenal costs of sewer collection systems and high rate of 
wastewater treatment technology. And with more than five billion people 
living near contaminated water we can never hope to get rid of water-borne 
epidemics or meet the Millennium Development Goals."

If taking the "toilet out of the water cycle" suggestion is taken seriously 
it is possible, Gijzen says, to have greener, eco-friendly cities 50 years 
from now while providing a toilet which everyone on the globe can afford. 
‘’Living in a home next to a water course, which not only has crystal clear 
water, but which you can you can actually drink from, can be a reality,’’ 
says Gijzen.

One promising design for a toilet, that attracted attention at the Seoul 
meet, actually recycles water using a biological and physical process and 
sends it back into the toilet bowl. Keon Ki- Lee, a Korean engineer who 
designed the system, says the toilet can be set up with or without a 
waterline or a drainage system and is environment friendly because the 
system does not produce a water discharge. "It has been received favourably 
by our local government," explained Lee

A new UNESCO project Sustainable Urban Water Management Improves Tomorrow’s 
City’s Health, or SWITCH for short, already implemented with a hefty budget 
of 32 million US dollars for a period of five years, is already being 
implemented.

A whole range of eco-friendly models are being tried and tested in nine demo 
cities which include Bogota, Beijing, Ghana, Lima, Colombia and Alexandria. 
Schemes include those for the rational use of water, effluent reuse, dry 
sanitation, urine separation and nutrient recovery.

Mamit shared the experience of an EcoSan model established in two 
residential rural schools in Sarawak where toilets were modified to 
accommodate one flushing in a day using up to two litres of water. The 
biogas produced has helped save over 500 dollars per month that was spent on 
buying cooking gas for the school kitchen.