Interactions Between Materials and Socio-Culture in Sanitation

Abstract The function of sanitation is to control the fate of human waste. A toilet is only the entrance to sanitation, and human waste as materials need to be appropriately handled throughout a sanitation service chain to control the impact of human waste on the environment. While the toilet has a private aspect, post-toilet sanitation has a public aspect. It is unclear how individuals and society should share the impact of post-toilet sanitation. Sanitation enabling the use of human waste may have greater material, socio-cultural, and health impacts in society than sanitation that does not enable the use of human waste. If the impacts caused by sanitation are unreasonable, sanitation will not be sustainable. Designing a sanitation service chain is traditionally an engineering-based business that optimizes these impacts, especially from the material and health aspects. However, in the real world, the system with the maximum benefit and minimum burden as a total for society is not necessarily preferred by all individual stakeholders. Rather than simply adjusting stakeholders’ interests, sanitation may actively establish appropriate relationships with each stakeholder, even on an individual level, to be more sustainable. Such a design approach would go beyond the traditional design approaches of sanitation optimization that use conventional engineering tools.