History of Ecological Sanitation
Ecological Sanitation – An Overview
Ecological sanitation, also known as ecosan or eco-san, is a contemporary sanitation solution that identifies human excreta and household wastewater as potential resources rather than waste products. It works around the concept that if appropriately recovered and treated, nutrients and organic products found in human excreta, urine and wastewater can be safely reused for improving agricultural and a host of other commonplace activities in an economically and ecologically advantageous manner.
History of Ecological Sanitation
Recovery and re-use of nutrients and organic products found in human urine and feces is not a new process. This eco-friendly sanitation practice has been put to use since many centuries by various cultures around the world. For instance, the Romans utilized the disinfectant property of human urine for washing and bleaching clothes. Likewise, the Chinese reaped the benefits of using human excreta in agricultural activities before 500 B.C. This traditional use of faeces for promoting agriculture helped the Chinese in providing food security at a higher density to a large section of the population. For doing this, human excrement were collected from cesspools and privies through well developed systems, and used as an effective crop fertilizer across all the major Chinese cities.
In urban centers of the Republic of Yemen in Middle East, elaborate systems were developed for collecting and separating human waste products even in multi-story buildings, where these materials, especially human faeces was dried and burnt as fuel. Also, people of the Aztec and Inca cultures in Mexico and Peru re-used and recycled human excreta for multipurpose agricultural activities. Excreta was dried, pulverized and used as an effective crop fertilizer in these places. Even in developed centers like Europe, utilizing excreta and wastewater was widely practiced by farmers of the Middle Ages - a practice that continued into the middle of the 19th Century. Today, various research projects related to sustainable use of nutrients from human excreta such as faeces and urine through ecosan systems is undertaken in places like Sweden, Zimbabwe, in the Netherlands, Norway and Germany.
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is continually depleting with its increasing demand. Key reasons that account for the growing demand of water.