Urban Sanitation: New Terminology for Globally Relevant Solutions?

Abstract

Progress toward Sustainable Development Goals for global access to safesanitation is lagging significantly. In this Feature, we propose that misleading terminologyleads to errors of categorization and hinders progress toward sanitation service provision inurban areas. Binary classifications such as “offsite/onsite” and “sewered/nonsewered” do notcapture the need for “transport to treatment” or the complexity of urban sanitation andshould be discarded. “Fecal sludge management” is used only in the development context oflow- or middle-income countries, implying separate solutions for “poor” or “southern”contexts, which is unhelpful. Terminology alone does not solve problems, but rather thanusing outdated or “special” terminology, we argue that a robust terminology that is globallyrelevant across low-, middle-, and upper-income contexts is required to overcomeincreasingly unhelpful assumptions and stereotypes. The use of accurate, technically robustvocabulary and definitions can improve decisions about management and selection oftreatment, promote a circular economy, provide a basis for evidence-based science andtechnology research, and lead to critical shifts and transformations to set policy goals aroundtruly safely managed sanitation. In this Feature, the three current modes of sanitation are defined, examples of misconceptions basedon existing terminology are presented, and a new terminology for collection and conveyance is proposed: (I) fully road transported,(II) source-separated mixed transport, (III) mixed transport, and (IV) fully pipe transported. KEYWORDS: city-wide inclusive sanitation, fecal sludge, onsite, septic tank, pit latrine, sewer, sustainable development goals, wastewater.