Water Wheel Jan/Feb 2023: New Sanitation

Abstract

New South African guide for the selection of appropriate sanitation systems While South African municipalities struggle to address sanitation service backlogs for low density rural areas, peri-urban and informal settlements, technology developers across the globe are innovating new solutions in sanitation. In South Africa, dry on-site sanitation is utilised in most rural and peri-urban areas while waterborne sanitation is the norm in urban areas (the binary sanitation paradigm). While the drive to extend waterborne sanitation to rural areas is motivated largely by political pressure and user aspirations, widespread implementation of conventional approaches is unsustainable and near impossible in a country with water scarcity, constrained infrastructure, and limited budgets due to the high costs involved. Alternative solutions have been developed in recent years with the aim of improving sanitation services without the high capital investment and water usage required for large reticulation services.

Categories