Schuster-Wallace, C.J. (2015). Waste to Wealth: Helping to Close the Sanitation Financing Gap in Rural Communities and Small Towns. Solutions 6(6): 60–69. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/2015/6/waste-to-wealth-helping-to-close-the-sanitation-financing-gap-in-rural-communities-and-small-towns
Feature
Waste to Wealth: Helping to Close the Sanitation Financing Gap in Rural Communities and Small Towns by Corinne J. Schuster-Wallace
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ccess to sanitation has proved to be one of the toughest nuts to crack in international development, as evidenced by the fact that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for sanitation, to reduce the number of people in low and middle-income countries without access to adequate sanitation by 50 percent, was the furthest off track of any MDG at the end of 2015. Slightly less than one billion people around the world practice open defecation—that is, they do not use any toilet facilities—and 2.4 billion do not have access to improved sanitation facilities.1 This has environmental, social, and economic implications. Environmental implications are a result of pathogens and nutrients in feces, which are aesthetically unpleasant and contaminate water sources. In large water bodies, these nutrients cause eutrophication, an overgrowth of algae that eventually deoxygenates the water, leaving it as a dead zone for fish and other aquatic animals. This ‘dead zone’ is referred to as hypoxia, which is increasing in lakes and oceans are increasing because of sewage contamination, in addition to agricultural runoff and water temperature changes linked to climate change.2 Social impacts include lack of dignity, respect, and safety, particularly
for women and girls. The lack of toilets appropriate for menstrual hygiene in schools means that post-pubescent girls and female teachers can be absent up to one week every month, affecting their educational achievement. For 650 million people around the world without access to improved drinking water sources, or the almost two billion without access to potable water,1,3 pathogens in water cause significant burdens of diarrheal and nematode diseases that affect cognitive and physical development in young children, affecting school attendance, individual productivity (whether at school or work), and creating a preventable burden on the healthcare system. As a result, economic costs have been estimated at USD$260 billion annually (1.5 percent of global GDP) in the countries that are most significantly affected by lack of sanitation.4 There are three main reasons for lagging progress towards the 2015 MDG sanitation target: 1) sanitation and managing bodily wastes is not appealing to some donors who would prefer to invest in “sexier” development infrastructure;5 2) many national governments cannot afford to invest in scaling up sanitation at the level required to meet this target; and 3) sanitation is not simply an infrastructure issue but also a behavior
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In Brief The newly agreed upon global Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) call for poverty reduction, equity, and sustainable development. Lack of sanitation undermines these through preventable illness that takes people out of schools and the workplace and uses up ill-affordable household income on medications; through inequitable access for the poorest countries and poorest people of the world and inequitable burdens on women, the elderly, and those with physical infirmities; and pollutes the environment with germ-ridden fecal waste. Almost 2.4 billion people in the world today do not have access to proper sanitation facilities, mainly because of the cost of providing infrastructure and the education required to change behaviors. Waste to Wealth is an integrated and holistic business approach to help close the financing gap and incentivize toilet use in order to aid in expansion of sanitation services, poverty reduction, elimination of inequities, and environmental improvements.