From S. Janakarajan, Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) Chennai
Posted 5 June 2007
I work with the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in Chennai.
In recent years, there is a growing emphasis on promoting Ecological Sanitation (ecosan) due to a number of factors:
A number of practices have been identified for Ecological sanitation such as Urine separation,composting toilets, waste water gardens, etc. The three-step process for dealing with human excreta on the basis of Ecosan are : (1) Containment, (2) Sanitization,(3) Recycling. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_sanitation and other Eco-san websites for details.
Thus, Eco-San appears to be a good concept, and is being used in a few villages in India.However, the failure rates of implementing eco-san are reported to be very high.
In this context, I would be interested to know from members :
Members’ inputs will help all of us in understanding the issues involved in wider replication of Eco-san toilets, and would be greatly appreciated.
Please see attachment below for the responses.