Detail Abstract

Circular Economy for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene of Future Cities

Abstract

Enter description here. Poor sanitation remains a global problem that need to be addressed, as there are over two billion people who have no or limited access to sanitation. More than two-third of this unserved people are also found in the rural communities. According to World Bank, there are still around 7.5 million Filipinos without access to improved water supply and 24 million without access to improved sanitation. The rural communities are the main sector where improved access to these two basic needs remains the lowest. In addition, toilets of these households in rural communities are typically connected to septic tanks if any that are poorly designed or maintained wherein most effluent is likely to be discharged without proper treatment. This may result to increased incidence of waterborne diseases in these rural areas as such practices pollute the water resources and aggravate the problem of access to safe and potable water. Thus, the innovative nature of recovering resources from the sanitation sector offers potential solutions to the downfalls of wastewater treatment and sanitation system. The sanitation economy which maximize the value from sanitation could present a huge potential for economic growth at a global scale while achieving universal access to improved sanitation, i.e., one of the indicators of SDG6. For example, our on-going project has been able to quantify the value of nutrients in urban domestic wastewater for the first time in the Philippines. Additionally, it succeeded in developing a low-cost method for recovering nutrients (fertilizer), nitrogen and phosphorus, which will substantially reduce Philippines’ dependence on imported chemical non-renewable (phosphate) fertilizer and reduce the pollution of water resources. In the urban context, the project has also generated scientific data-based evidence from Metro Manila which could be effectively harnessed to develop an integrated system of turning human waste into fertilizer. This can have a significant outcome in ensuring food security through the large-scale use of wastewater-recovered fertilizer in farming and in strengthening resilience capacities of growing cities in the Philippines. However, the path to adoption of technologies designed for recovery of resources has encountered barriers of different types, impeding further development of such circular sanitation economy. It is imperative to identify these barriers and assess their relative importance and mutual influence. An illustrative case study is presented to elucidate the method.