Society, Culture, Religion and History

WSSCC Member Flash
Periodic updates for WSSCC members on hot and late-breaking topics   

Global Handwashing Day Special Edition

The practice of handwashing with soap has been prominent in the last few years on the international hygiene agenda. The second annual Global Handwashing Day takes place on Thursday, 15 October 2009 in countries all over the world, including countries where WSSCC is active through its National WASH Coalitions. The guiding vision of Global Handwashing Day is a local and global culture of handwashing with soap. Although people around the world wash their hands with water, very few wash their hands with soap at critical moments (for example, after using the toilet, while cleaning a child, and before handling food).  

 Biome Solutions, a Bangalore-based company working on sustainable architecture and buildings visited some flood affected areas in Guntur to observe the situation and see the suitability of applying "Ecological Sanitation", a new approach to sanitation. (Search on India Water Portal for "Ecological sanitation" for more information on this). Their report  after their travels can be seen below.

A point of interest is the picture of a flooded toilet. Pit toilets which are the norm in rural areas have the disadvantage that during floods the pit below the toilet (where the human waste accumulates over time) gets flooded and the toilet becomes unusable. The faecal matter can come out of the toilet pan and create a real mess which needs to be cleaned up. 

Read their report at: 

http://biomesolutions.blogspot.com/2009/10/visit-to-flood-affected-areas-in-guntur.html

 This report found on the World Health Organisation site has been brought out by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, that tracks the progress on target 10 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which is "To halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation".

2008 being the International Year of Sanitation, the report highlights the importance of sanitation, as being the crucial stepping stone to health , which offers:

Poor sanitation and hygiene is one of the major causes of poor water quality, as  bacterial from human excreta find their way into drinking water or directly into our bodies through unclean hands.

The document was made by the Department of Drinking Water Supply, Government of India.

Mr. S.S. Ranganathan, author of this guest post, is a retired senior executive of Ion Exchange and currently a consultant based in Bangalore.

He can be reached at: ss.ranganathan@gmail.com , +91-9343734229

WATER SECURITY FOR THE RESIDENTS OF APARTMENTS & GATED COMMUNITIES -  S.S.Ranganathan

This report by the

A member of the PLC Watsan group Dhani behn, has built an Ecosan toilet for herself - one of the first in Gujarat-about a year back. This is one of the best toilets on Ecosan I have seen and the simple and elegant story of the same is hugely impressive. It is located in Bhavnagar Saurashtra - Gujarat. She was part of an exposure visit of PLC WatSan to a MYRADA project in Karnataka implementing ecosan. She has one simple reason for use of the toilet- it's less use of water. Even with a twin pit pour flush about 5 litres of water gets used for a single flush and in a day 20 to 25 litres of water can get flushed by one person. Even this is too much in arid and semi arid Gujarat. The transfer of knowledge has resulted in an elegant solution to an otherwise vexing issue that can be made applicable on a larger scale across the state. There exists tremendous interest in Eco-san from other parts of Gujarat too including the coast with its high and saline water table and the tribal hamlets with its hard rock terrain and the rest with a lot of water shortage. {C}

"Megh Pyne Abhiyan" is a network of NGOS that has been working in flood affected areas in Bihar with Arghyam support for the past few years. MPA has been grappling with the idea of providing clean water and sanitation in Bihar.

EEDS has successfully developed various models of light weight concrete composites Ecosan pans with the support of UNICEF, New Delhi and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Sweden. These products were unveiled at the SACOSAN conference held in New Delhi recently.

Vishwanath calls on all to set aside the "yuck" factor and take a rational view of the use of urine as a fertilizer. From a open discussion he goes on to list out the advantages of using plant nutrient rich urine as fertilizer and provides the maths behind his validation!! Write in with your take in the comments!