March 22, 2017
For most people in the world, water is a life giver. But for 21m people in Bangladesh, it could be a death sentence.
Water pollution is a grave concern in the country, caused by sources including runoff from textile factories and the unsafe disposal of human waste. According to UN-Water, 80 per cent of global wastewater is dumped without treatment, causing a number of risks to human health and the environment. In low-income countries such as Bangladesh, typically only eight to 10 per cent of human waste is treated.
That is why the government of Bangladesh is seeking new ways to collect and treat the estimated 1.47bn litres of human waste from pit latrines that are being dumped locally each year, polluting the environment and allowing dangerous pathogens to spread to water sources, causing illness and infection.
While Bangladesh has made much progress in rural sanitation, with over 40m pit latrines being built in recent years, collecting and removing this waste is still an unsolved challenge. How much will safer systems cost, and who is going to pay for them? Until now, we did not know.
Today, on World Water Day, a study published in the journal PLoS ONE and funded by the Government of the Netherlands has revealed a new system that could dramatically reduce removal costs for poor households struggling with large volumes of human waste — known as fecal sludge — and could catalyse profitable businesses dealing in its collection and conversion to useful products.
In Bhaluka subdistrict, pit owners typically pay between $4 and $6 to have their latrine emptied, usually every three to four years. The sludge is emptied manually, on an ad hoc basis, and deposited nearby as no central treatment facilities exist yet. The process is inefficient and unsafe.
Our study shows that the least costly method of collecting sludge and transporting it to a central location for treatment would entail a household in Bhaluka paying US$13 every time a full pit is emptied, around 14 per cent of monthly income. However, spreading this cost in the form of a monthly subscription for an improved waste removal system would cost households just $0.31 a month — roughly what the pit owner would spend on a mobile phone contract. This amount would cover manual or mechanised waste removal, as well as transportation by truck to a central location for treatment.
Besides the vast environmental and health benefits that safe removal of fecal sludge would offer, this new system could pave the way for the business of waste removal to boom. In one district alone it is estimated that between 300 and 600 new jobs could be created. By signing up thousands of pit owners to a monthly subscription, waste removal services would ensure a steady flow of capital that could be invested in improving their equipment and efficiency. As the service improves, more households will sign up, kick-starting a virtuous circle. With total economic losses from inadequate sanitation in Bangladesh alone estimated to be $4.2bn each year, the new approach could go a long way to reducing the economic drag created by inadequate waste management.
In addition, the system would centralise consistent volumes of fecal sludge, which can be turned into profitable by-products such as fertiliser and fuel. Pilot projects in Gazipur have shown the potential for human waste to be treated and turned into high-value compost for plantations growing non-edible commodities such as rubber and cotton. Now that the technical viability of producing this compost has been proven, further work can get under way to determine the cost of producing it at scale, and the price it could fetch on the market.
Another critical step will be analysing the costs that would be involved in setting up and running a central treatment plant. Now that costs involved in the transportation link have been determined, a treatment plant could now be set up on a pilot basis and analysed in the same manner.
Bangladesh is sitting up and taking notice of these findings. The first policy framework for fecal sludge management has now been produced and a scheme to pilot the system will be scheduled in the near future.
Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated places on the planet; an approach that proves effective in this context could offer important lessons for other countries grappling with similar wastewater issues. This study not only has the potential to transform lives in Bangladesh, but could also provide a blueprint for revolutionising sanitation systems across the rest of the developing world, relieving rural households of the burden of fecal sludge for good.
Soumya Balasubramanya is an economist at the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka. Barbara Evans is the chair in public health engineering in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds.
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