Making Sanitation a Sustainable Business

• Drivers and roadblocks. Community consultations and partnerships were found to be critical drivers of progress in meeting millennium development goals. Treating sanitation as a business has been successful, but there was only little reference to leveraging private and household financing.
• The 3 I’s: information, institutions, and incentives. Sanitation targets can be realized by: raising awareness and propagating information; tapping the appropriate organizations and the right technology; and employing low cost solutions from the private sector and small businesses.
• Effective sanitation through technology. Operations and management are essential to the success of sanitation projects in terms of skill and costs. Also, the self-cleaning capacity of the environment must be considered when setting discharge and sewage standards. In addition, a phased planning approach and decentralized options are also important.
• Accessibility, viability and sustainability. For environmental sanitation, flexible and robust solutions are necessary; political support, optimization, sound asset management, and investor reassurance are vital. For household sanitation, public funded support should complement markets and demand creation must precede supply. Supply chains must be strengthened to facilitate access to sanitation. New financing schemes and social entrepreneurs are also important.
• Waste into opportunities. Wastewater could be used for energy generation, water stress reduction, production of agricultural products, and climate change resilience enhancement. Nowadays, wastewater reclamation is also becoming a business essential to reform the current situation and create an enabling environment.
• Strategic partnerships. Sanitation options can work more efficiently by using new knowledge and technology to arrive at community-based solutions and by attracting private sector involvement and financing for sustainable sanitation projects. 
• Sanitation revolution. A sanitation revolution would require raising awareness and advocacy; introducing effective and sustainable knowledge and technology; and strengthening meaningful partnerships to boost sufficient financing.

Source:

“Making Sanitation a Sustainable Business.” 2nd ADB and Partners Sanitation Dialogue Conference Report, May 2011, from    http://www.adb.org/water/operations/sanitation/2nd-sanitation-dialogue.asp.