Date: 23/05/2005
Source: Department of Science and Technology
Title: Hanekom: Opening of International Conference on Ecological Sanitation
Keynote address at the opening of the third International Conference on Ecological Sanitation by the Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Derek Hanekom
Executive Mayor of eThekwini, Obed Mlaba
Delegates to this conference
Ladies and gentlemen
On behalf of the Government of South Africa it is my pleasure to welcome you to this third International Conference on Ecological Sanitation. To all international delegates: welcome to our country - it is a great honour to have you here with us.
This conference is dealing with a critical household need. In South Africa today, 16 million mainly rural people still do not enjoy basic hygienic sanitation.
The sanitation challenge was emphasised when the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) added sanitation to the Millennium Development Goals for water supply and world leaders committed to halving the proportion of people without adequate sanitation by 2015. South Africa was in the forefront of this campaign.
While sanitation is important for health, it is also about dignity. The sanitation challenge is as much social as it is technological. I am sure this gathering of sanitation experts knows very well that going to the toilet is a sensitive subject and that many people are reluctant to talk about it. It is also a difficult matter for politicians to address. However, this is not an issue we can avoid – appropriate and sustainable sanitation solutions are critical to human health and an essential component in quality of life enhancement.
I would like to dwell for a moment on why Durban was selected as the venue for this conference. Apart from the fact that Cape Town is too cold, wet and windy at the moment, the reason that Durban was selected was that it was one of the two areas in South Africa where ecological sanitation is extensively applied. The other area is the Northern Cape. We have gone far beyond the pilot projects stage – there is now a concerted effort to provide sustainable sanitation to the poor in South Africa, who are the primary beneficiaries of government housing and infrastructure programmes. The result has been the provision of over 20 000 toilets of this type in Durban and 15 000 toilets in Northern Cape.
So why have these two areas independently arrived at the same conclusion? The answer lies in the National Strategic Framework for Water Services, which defines a sanitation facility as follows:
“The infrastructure necessary to provide a sanitation facility which is safe, reliable, private, protected from the weather and ventilated, keeps smells to the minimum, is easy to keep clean, minimises the risk of the spread of sanitation-related diseases by facilitating the appropriate control of disease carrying flies and pests, and enables safe and appropriate treatment and/or removal of human waste and waste water in an environmentally sound manner”.
Note the words “safe” and “reliable”.
Durban came to the conclusion that with the inclusion of the peri-urban areas into the municipality it could not possibly extend the waterborne sewage network to service all these areas, as the capital and operating costs would be beyond the resources of the municipality, and therefore the service would not be reliable, and if it is not reliable then sewage will spill into the rivers and sea, spreading disease. It therefore drew a waterborne edge around the city, beyond which it would not provide waterborne sewage. The next question was what service to provide to the people living in the peri-urban areas, many of whom had settled in these areas during the Apartheid period when they were prevented by law from living in the city.
For many years the Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) Toilet had been built in the areas of KwaMashu, Umlazi and informal settlements such as Bester’s Camp. These had been built since the early 90s and were now filling up. The problem was how to empty them. Due to the density of the settlements and steep terrain the municipality found that it could not empty them, nor was there space to construct a second toilet and, therefore, the VIP was no longer reliable as it overflowed. In line with the Strategic Framework, the municipality “developed and disseminated appropriate and environmentally friendly technology to support the provision of affordable and reliable water and sanitation services to all South Africans”.
The conclusion that they reached was that the double vault urine diversion toilet, with the urine being led to a soak away, was the most appropriate solution in that it provided a permanent structure, which could be empted manually by the household using basic garden tools, such as a spade and a rake. In very dense areas the contents of the vault might need to be taken to a central point for collection and removal, but since it is dry and light, it could be carried in a plastic sack, unlike the contents of a VIP toilet where the content is liquid and heavy and needs a rigid container.
The technology met the requirements, given the financial constraints faced by the municipality and the households, of long term sustainability and minimises the risk of pollution - central tenets of the “Strategic Framework for Water Services”
Other municipalities have also reached similar conclusions. For example in the Northern Cape the municipalities have the problem of hard rock and little water and therefore were looking for a technology that did not require a pit or water. In Cape Town on the Cape Flats the problem of a water table, almost at ground level, and very dense informal settlements, precluded the proposed solutions, particularly the VIP toilet.
In Kimberley and Buffalo City the municipalities have taken the logic of this approach into the urban areas and questioned the wisdom of providing waterborne sewage in low income housing developments. The revenue base of these municipalities is insufficient to cover the high cost of the infrastructure, and the existing outfall sewers and treatment works are already overloaded. Again, in line with the Strategic Framework, both are experimenting with low income housing utilising dry urine diversion toilets and grey water recycling to obviate the need for waterborne sewage. Apart from the savings in capital cost there are significant savings to households of over R200 per month. This is a substantial amount to the 50% of our population surviving on less than R1500 per month.
The urine diversion system therefore provides a viable solution in the eradication of the bucket system to which R1.2 billion of Municipal Infrastructure Grant funding has been allocated. We would encourage municipalities to ensure that these funds are ring-fenced for sanitation provision.
However, the challenge is to assist municipalities to implement sanitation projects since there is still limited expertise for this in the country.
In all of these programmes in South Africa there is one common theme. The focus is “to ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner”; rather than the reuse of urine and faeces for agricultural purposes, which is what defines Ecological Sanitation.
Why is this? For the same reason as the inhabitants of the complexes utilising Ecological Sanitation in Sweden - they want a toilet that is comfortable to use, provides privacy and safety and above all does not smell. If the end product is used for agricultural purposes, they are not involved in that side of it and would prefer to pay someone else to remove and process the products.
Among the residence in the Hull Street project in Kimberley the same preference was evident. At the start of the project the inhabitants were expected to empty the toilets themselves and this led to serious complaints, which were highlighted in the press. Now an emptying service is provided at a cost of R5 per emptying. The end product is composted, but without the involvement of the household.
Thus where no service is provided or is unaffordable by the household the emphasis has been on safe disposal of the excreta rather than its re-use for agriculture purposes. Given that there is a degree of antipathy towards the handling of faeces how do we get acceptance of such a technology?
Let us start off with the recognition that technologies do not work unless they are accepted by the user. The challenge for this conference is not just to talk about the technologies, but to address the interface between technology and implementation. It is about the old dialectic between theory and practice. Successful technologies are the ones that are adopted. So, however much you may believe that the technologies you are discussing here offer a real solution, remember that they will not be applied unless the users – and their political representatives - want them. Across the country, when we talk about sanitation, people want to know why they should have VIP Toilets, low flush or even ECOSAN systems, when the rich suburbs have always had those nice clean flush toilets.
To get products known and accepted, manufacturers spend a great deal of money on marketing their brands and products. In the foyer on the Science and Technology stand is the Prius hybrid motor car. The car is relatively ecologically sound in that it has reduced emissions, conserves natural resources and through reduced fossil fuel demand contributes to South Africa meeting the requirements of the Kyoto Treaty. But you can be sure that this car will not sell unless it looks good and fulfils the basic requirement of getting the consumer reliably from point A to point B. Since the consumer has a choice of other makes and models, the manufacturer must provide a product that most closely satisfies their needs.
On the same stand we have a dry urine diversion toilet, which also reduces pollution, conserves natural resources - in this case water - and also reduces energy demand required to operate municipal services. However, the toilet is not sold to individuals in the same manner as the Prius vehicle. Household have to be satisfied that this product most closely satisfies their needs. As a result there have been many problems with the acceptance of the technology.
Most of us would not accept the government imposing on us the type of car, house or bathroom design, so why treat the poor differently and impose technology instead of getting them to choose technology, and therefore take ownership and responsibility for maintaining it? “Buy-in” and acceptance is essential. In the case of sanitation though, it is clear that the choices cannot be unlimited. Waterborne sewage is not something you can shop around for in the shopping mall – it is dependent on government provided infrastructure and resources, and government does not only have service delivery responsibilities. It is responsible for the conservation of scarce resources, has to keep our environment clean and ensure sustainability. Just as the eThekwini Municipality has done, governments have to be bold enough to spell out the parameters.
So where does science and technology play a role in this? The popular perception of science and technology is that it focuses only on advanced, complex technologies, like the Prius motor car, or the telescope at Sutherland, or the Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor. In fact, science and technology is about sustainable and effective solutions to society’s needs. This includes simple, effective and innovative technologies, and methods of implementation, to improve the livelihoods of the poorer members of our communities.
Apart from supporting the project in Buffalo City, which incorporates urine diversion toilets, the Department of Science and Technology supports a number of projects for improving the energy efficiency of houses, waste minimisation and collection to improve the environment, and a variety of innovative income-generating projects. All of these, if successful, would greatly improve the quality of life with no increase in household spending.
But for now let us focus our minds on the search for sustainable and environmentally friendly sanitation solutions. Billions of people around the world stand to gain improved health and dignity, and our planet can be made a better place to live on. On that note, I wish you well in your very important deliberations and hope you enjoy your stay in Durban, including our unpolluted beaches! Mind the sharks though – they are part of our precious heritage.
Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
23 May 2005
Source: Department of Science and Technology
Title: Hanekom: Opening of International Conference on Ecological Sanitation
Keynote address at the opening of the third International Conference on Ecological Sanitation by the Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Derek Hanekom
Executive Mayor of eThekwini, Obed Mlaba
Delegates to this conference
Ladies and gentlemen
On behalf of the Government of South Africa it is my pleasure to welcome you to this third International Conference on Ecological Sanitation. To all international delegates: welcome to our country - it is a great honour to have you here with us.
This conference is dealing with a critical household need. In South Africa today, 16 million mainly rural people still do not enjoy basic hygienic sanitation.
The sanitation challenge was emphasised when the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) added sanitation to the Millennium Development Goals for water supply and world leaders committed to halving the proportion of people without adequate sanitation by 2015. South Africa was in the forefront of this campaign.
While sanitation is important for health, it is also about dignity. The sanitation challenge is as much social as it is technological. I am sure this gathering of sanitation experts knows very well that going to the toilet is a sensitive subject and that many people are reluctant to talk about it. It is also a difficult matter for politicians to address. However, this is not an issue we can avoid – appropriate and sustainable sanitation solutions are critical to human health and an essential component in quality of life enhancement.
I would like to dwell for a moment on why Durban was selected as the venue for this conference. Apart from the fact that Cape Town is too cold, wet and windy at the moment, the reason that Durban was selected was that it was one of the two areas in South Africa where ecological sanitation is extensively applied. The other area is the Northern Cape. We have gone far beyond the pilot projects stage – there is now a concerted effort to provide sustainable sanitation to the poor in South Africa, who are the primary beneficiaries of government housing and infrastructure programmes. The result has been the provision of over 20 000 toilets of this type in Durban and 15 000 toilets in Northern Cape.
So why have these two areas independently arrived at the same conclusion? The answer lies in the National Strategic Framework for Water Services, which defines a sanitation facility as follows:
“The infrastructure necessary to provide a sanitation facility which is safe, reliable, private, protected from the weather and ventilated, keeps smells to the minimum, is easy to keep clean, minimises the risk of the spread of sanitation-related diseases by facilitating the appropriate control of disease carrying flies and pests, and enables safe and appropriate treatment and/or removal of human waste and waste water in an environmentally sound manner”.
Note the words “safe” and “reliable”.
Durban came to the conclusion that with the inclusion of the peri-urban areas into the municipality it could not possibly extend the waterborne sewage network to service all these areas, as the capital and operating costs would be beyond the resources of the municipality, and therefore the service would not be reliable, and if it is not reliable then sewage will spill into the rivers and sea, spreading disease. It therefore drew a waterborne edge around the city, beyond which it would not provide waterborne sewage. The next question was what service to provide to the people living in the peri-urban areas, many of whom had settled in these areas during the Apartheid period when they were prevented by law from living in the city.
For many years the Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) Toilet had been built in the areas of KwaMashu, Umlazi and informal settlements such as Bester’s Camp. These had been built since the early 90s and were now filling up. The problem was how to empty them. Due to the density of the settlements and steep terrain the municipality found that it could not empty them, nor was there space to construct a second toilet and, therefore, the VIP was no longer reliable as it overflowed. In line with the Strategic Framework, the municipality “developed and disseminated appropriate and environmentally friendly technology to support the provision of affordable and reliable water and sanitation services to all South Africans”.
The conclusion that they reached was that the double vault urine diversion toilet, with the urine being led to a soak away, was the most appropriate solution in that it provided a permanent structure, which could be empted manually by the household using basic garden tools, such as a spade and a rake. In very dense areas the contents of the vault might need to be taken to a central point for collection and removal, but since it is dry and light, it could be carried in a plastic sack, unlike the contents of a VIP toilet where the content is liquid and heavy and needs a rigid container.
The technology met the requirements, given the financial constraints faced by the municipality and the households, of long term sustainability and minimises the risk of pollution - central tenets of the “Strategic Framework for Water Services”
Other municipalities have also reached similar conclusions. For example in the Northern Cape the municipalities have the problem of hard rock and little water and therefore were looking for a technology that did not require a pit or water. In Cape Town on the Cape Flats the problem of a water table, almost at ground level, and very dense informal settlements, precluded the proposed solutions, particularly the VIP toilet.
In Kimberley and Buffalo City the municipalities have taken the logic of this approach into the urban areas and questioned the wisdom of providing waterborne sewage in low income housing developments. The revenue base of these municipalities is insufficient to cover the high cost of the infrastructure, and the existing outfall sewers and treatment works are already overloaded. Again, in line with the Strategic Framework, both are experimenting with low income housing utilising dry urine diversion toilets and grey water recycling to obviate the need for waterborne sewage. Apart from the savings in capital cost there are significant savings to households of over R200 per month. This is a substantial amount to the 50% of our population surviving on less than R1500 per month.
The urine diversion system therefore provides a viable solution in the eradication of the bucket system to which R1.2 billion of Municipal Infrastructure Grant funding has been allocated. We would encourage municipalities to ensure that these funds are ring-fenced for sanitation provision.
However, the challenge is to assist municipalities to implement sanitation projects since there is still limited expertise for this in the country.
In all of these programmes in South Africa there is one common theme. The focus is “to ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner”; rather than the reuse of urine and faeces for agricultural purposes, which is what defines Ecological Sanitation.
Why is this? For the same reason as the inhabitants of the complexes utilising Ecological Sanitation in Sweden - they want a toilet that is comfortable to use, provides privacy and safety and above all does not smell. If the end product is used for agricultural purposes, they are not involved in that side of it and would prefer to pay someone else to remove and process the products.
Among the residence in the Hull Street project in Kimberley the same preference was evident. At the start of the project the inhabitants were expected to empty the toilets themselves and this led to serious complaints, which were highlighted in the press. Now an emptying service is provided at a cost of R5 per emptying. The end product is composted, but without the involvement of the household.
Thus where no service is provided or is unaffordable by the household the emphasis has been on safe disposal of the excreta rather than its re-use for agriculture purposes. Given that there is a degree of antipathy towards the handling of faeces how do we get acceptance of such a technology?
Let us start off with the recognition that technologies do not work unless they are accepted by the user. The challenge for this conference is not just to talk about the technologies, but to address the interface between technology and implementation. It is about the old dialectic between theory and practice. Successful technologies are the ones that are adopted. So, however much you may believe that the technologies you are discussing here offer a real solution, remember that they will not be applied unless the users – and their political representatives - want them. Across the country, when we talk about sanitation, people want to know why they should have VIP Toilets, low flush or even ECOSAN systems, when the rich suburbs have always had those nice clean flush toilets.
To get products known and accepted, manufacturers spend a great deal of money on marketing their brands and products. In the foyer on the Science and Technology stand is the Prius hybrid motor car. The car is relatively ecologically sound in that it has reduced emissions, conserves natural resources and through reduced fossil fuel demand contributes to South Africa meeting the requirements of the Kyoto Treaty. But you can be sure that this car will not sell unless it looks good and fulfils the basic requirement of getting the consumer reliably from point A to point B. Since the consumer has a choice of other makes and models, the manufacturer must provide a product that most closely satisfies their needs.
On the same stand we have a dry urine diversion toilet, which also reduces pollution, conserves natural resources - in this case water - and also reduces energy demand required to operate municipal services. However, the toilet is not sold to individuals in the same manner as the Prius vehicle. Household have to be satisfied that this product most closely satisfies their needs. As a result there have been many problems with the acceptance of the technology.
Most of us would not accept the government imposing on us the type of car, house or bathroom design, so why treat the poor differently and impose technology instead of getting them to choose technology, and therefore take ownership and responsibility for maintaining it? “Buy-in” and acceptance is essential. In the case of sanitation though, it is clear that the choices cannot be unlimited. Waterborne sewage is not something you can shop around for in the shopping mall – it is dependent on government provided infrastructure and resources, and government does not only have service delivery responsibilities. It is responsible for the conservation of scarce resources, has to keep our environment clean and ensure sustainability. Just as the eThekwini Municipality has done, governments have to be bold enough to spell out the parameters.
So where does science and technology play a role in this? The popular perception of science and technology is that it focuses only on advanced, complex technologies, like the Prius motor car, or the telescope at Sutherland, or the Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor. In fact, science and technology is about sustainable and effective solutions to society’s needs. This includes simple, effective and innovative technologies, and methods of implementation, to improve the livelihoods of the poorer members of our communities.
Apart from supporting the project in Buffalo City, which incorporates urine diversion toilets, the Department of Science and Technology supports a number of projects for improving the energy efficiency of houses, waste minimisation and collection to improve the environment, and a variety of innovative income-generating projects. All of these, if successful, would greatly improve the quality of life with no increase in household spending.
But for now let us focus our minds on the search for sustainable and environmentally friendly sanitation solutions. Billions of people around the world stand to gain improved health and dignity, and our planet can be made a better place to live on. On that note, I wish you well in your very important deliberations and hope you enjoy your stay in Durban, including our unpolluted beaches! Mind the sharks though – they are part of our precious heritage.
Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
23 May 2005
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