Recent post from Co chair of WG05 worldwide conference on water and sanitation, The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance

Share this post

It depends Dan, on what the prime need is of the community or people you are servicing. Where I am mostly involved is where there is extreme need for food. IE., here in UK!
This Howard Higgins method is for instance far more economical than building a bio digestor! that produces only a small amount of cooking flame and maybe some light, as far as I know.
It is hugely expensive, so if they can afford it and don’t have a problem with food prices and availability…fine. The space they occupy is phenominal. I was staying with a famous Borders engineer in Kigali, Rwanda and saw all his presentations.
In this type of composting, however, and growing system, maximum food nutrition is made available in as much as ‘people won’t get ill’ and it will reduce a communities health bill dramatically.
There is never any run off danger and all urine is used in the composting process by either making urine earth (a fantasic fertilizer) and/or is used in the manufacture of compost. This gives the results I have mentioned without the need for separate irrigation endeavours (that can be problematic as WG05 has pointed out, IE., irrigating before harvest, contamination)
Plants become completely pest and disease free, so no purchase of any chemicals necessary, there is no ploughing or digging of the ground, so huge saving there and you will get heavier crops than if you did  these things. This is science and it needs to be out there. In previous text on 05
 I mentioned that 83%, yes 83% of UK deaths are attributable to improper nutrition…
While I fully appreciate the enormous effort that has been made by SuSanA projects worldwide to alleviate the sanitation crisis – our mission is to go this step further.

Further reading

The Sands of Time are running out

The Sands of Time are running out Sand is  the world’s most used solid substance.                     

Support Us

We work tirelessly to develop solutions to help tackle some of the biggest problems we face – sustainable farming and clean sanitation. With your help, we can accelerate that work.