muench wrote:


A note to Joe (Turner) (thank you, by the way, for all your interesting posts of late): you had written here that a UDDT toilet is nothing more than a bucket toilet: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/5-clts...dividual-rights#3538
This particular group has been offered UDDT which are basically buckets for reasons of cost.

This shocked me a bit - a UDDT has nothing in common with a "bucket toilet" (a term that is, by the way, highly politically charged in South Africa and in Namibia due to apartheid legacy where "white people had flush toilets and black people had bucket toilets" (even though it was of course not that clear cut)) - it makes all the difference whether urine is not diverted (resulting in a stinky mess!) or whether urine is diverted (and the faeces and toilet paper goes into a vault which may or may not have a bucket in the vault) - resulting in a dry, odourless toilet. (NB: I am happy to have this discussion but if we do, let's start a new thread for it. I think when you read this document you will clearly see how a UDDT cannot be called a "bucket toilet" and that it cannot be stamped as "inferior to a flush toilet" and hence as undesirable).

(...) it is generally accepted that VIP and UDDT are independent and exclusive terms.

The term ‘urine-diverting’ is understood to be synonymous
with ‘urine diversion’ and ‘urine separation’. The ‘faeces
vault’ is alternatively referred to as a ‘faeces chamber’.

A variety of different names are currently used around the
world to denote UDDTs:
• The term ecosan toilet is often used for UDDTs, largely
because it provides a simple terminology for
communication at the grass-roots level. This term
implies that the user or community at large must reuse
their treated excreta in accordance with the broader
ecosan concept. However, we consider excreta reuse a
matter of user preference that is not necessarily
required for the sustainability of UDDTs. Furthermore,
the range of possible ecosan solutions is not limited to
UDDT technologies.
• In India and South America, UDDTs are often referred
to as composting latrines. The term is misleading,
however, as the treatment of faeces in UDDTs does not
include a substantial composting process.
• Some researchers in the USA use the phrase Double
vault urine diversion latrine (DVUD latrine) to describe
UDDTs with double dehydration vaults.
• The term Urine Diversion Toilet (UD-Toilet) is used in
the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa,
which is home to the world’s highest number of UDDTs.
• In Spanish, the UDDT is widely known as Bano
Ecológical Seco. The term Toilette sèche avec
séparation d’urine is used in French speaking countries.
• Urine diversion dehydration toilet is another term used
by many people but strictly speaking it should only be
used for double vault systems.

Urine Diversion sanitation can be viewed as a three-step process dealing with human excreta: containment, sanitisation and recycling. The objective is to protect human health and the environment while reducing
the use of water in sanitation systems and recycling nutrients to help reduce the need for artificial fertilizers in agriculture (Winblad et al., 2004). The process requires the separation of the urine and faeces at source. The solid faecal matter is collected in a vault where it dehydrates, wood ash or soil and ash is often added to assist in the dehydration and composting process (Morgan, 2005). These systems also come in the form of buckets and pit.

Amongst these, the eThekwini Metro in South Africa uses a hybrid version which is a cross between both dry systems and can be called the Alternative Twin Pit Urine Diversion VIP.