Shit business is a serious business

Closing the sanitation loop and the productive use of human waste is emerging as a key challenge in the urban sanitation sector. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the re-use is taking place at a large scale often without external financial and technical support. This session during the 2011 Stockholm World Water Week highlights some of these cases from a business perspective. 

There is an emerging interest in social and economic business models for the recovery and re-use of water, nutrients and energy from otherwise wasted resources. This concerns especially urban and peri-urban areas in low-income countries where sanitation services are most challenged. Here resource recovery can contribute to cost recovery in the sanitation service chain while addressing e.g. water shortages and increasing fertilizer prices.

The session explored business cases and models with concrete examples from the domestic and agro-industrial waste sectors across the urban-rural divide in Africa and Asia. A big challenge still is increasing at scale and viability of the safe and productive re-use of water, nutrients and energy from liquid and solid waste streams to support sanitation, food security and livelihoods. Lessons were shared from an analysis of more than 100 business cases.

Session topics

David Molden presented Resource, Recovery & Reuse, a new CGIAR research agenda. Examples of Resource Recovery & Reuse, cases benefitting agriculture and sanitation were presented by Ashley Murray. Sludge Re-use in Mega Cities: An example from Southern India was presented by Elizabeth Kvarnström.

The panel members were Rudolph Cleveringa, Ashley Murray and Joep Verhagen and David Molden acted as moderator.