Overview - 4WS

Reuse of excreta and organic domestic waste in agriculture is a common practice in south-east Asia. This is not the case in the South Asian countries of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Here, waste is still deposited in public space. The potential to collect, recycle and reuse biologically degradable domestic waste for reuse in agriculture has hardly been explored. Access to proper sanitation is low, and sanitation programmes focus on containment and dumping and not recycling.

The 4WS project ‑ Women, Wellbeing, Work, Waste and Sanitation ‑ aims to address the sanitation problems in low income peri-urban communities in coastal areas of South Asia. This is done through participatory approaches that are gender and poverty sensitive. It also creates employment for women as latrine masons and in solid waste collection and recycling. This multi-disciplinary action research is comparing the cost-effectiveness of existing sanitation programmes with these innovative approaches.

Project partners are universities and NGOs from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and Finland and, at field level, local government and municipalities of six peri-urban coastal settlements.