ABSTRACT
The United Nations figures for 2015 show that only 83% of the world’s urban population had even ‘basic’ facilities for excreta disposal. Conventional water-borne sewerage was not appropriate for low-income communities, largely on the grounds of its unaffordable cost and unsustainable water requirement. In some cities, such as eThekwini in South Africa, faecal sludge management (FSM) is organised on a municipal scale; in others, the service is provided by small local enterprises or freelance artisans. The cost of setting and maintaining it should be considered as a part of the cost of on-site sanitation in a large city. Effective FSM requires a ‘road-based’ network, with a fleet of tanker trucks or other appropriate vehicles, which are the analogue of the pipe-based network in a sewer system. Early certainties are also mellowing on the funding of sanitation by government or donors – in a word, subsidies.
