Hi, Eliesabeth:
Thank you for the detailed information given to me.
It is hilly area and the households have enough space for the gardening work. The urine can be used for growing vegetables where can be grown throughout the year.
If there were an research opportunity for the reuse of urine and dried feaces, i would like to go there to demonstrate my practice to them.
best wishes
Scott

Congratulations to the Durban team. a job so well done. Cheers, Peter, Harare

Hi Scott,

No, that large-scale UDDT implementation that the eThekwini municipality has done (which Arno mentioned above), does not include any reuse activities.

It is all described here in this SuSanA case study:
www.susana.org/en/resources/case-studies/details/791

At that time in 2011 it was 75,000 toilets. Arno said it is 100,000 now (although I haven't seen that figure confirmed).

I was involved in writing this document and we asked several questions about the reuse side.

I copy here from the document (see page 6):

Although EWS is not advocating the use of dried or
composted faecal matter or urine as a soil conditioner or
fertiliser at this stage, this is something that could change in
the future, through the completion of further studies and field
tests in eThekwini as well as from sensitising and informing
the UDDT users about the opportunities that reuse could offer
them.
Gardening activities are apparently not very popular in this
area. (Why ?)

I could never really figure out why gardening activities at household level are not popular in this area, which is why the document still includes the "Why?" question.

Perhaps Chris Buckley would like to give us more insight (now 3 years later after the case study was written).

A related research project (which is making use of the collected urine for research purposes) is the VUNA project which we have discussed in detail here:
www.forum.susana.org/forum/categories/98...and-and-south-africa

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Arno,
Congratulations! It is the largest scale UDDTs in the world. Has the waste been turned into money?
best regards
Scott

eThekwini Water & Sanitation, a part of Durban Municipality in South Africa, has been named the 2014 winner of the Stockholm Industry Water Award, for its transformative and inclusive approach to providing water and sanitation services.

www.siwi.org/prizes/stockholmindustrywateraward/winners/2014-2/

My personal congratulations to Neil Macleod at eThekwini Water and Sanitation who has lead this work for so many years. And this is a victory for all the many partners within the sector in the Durban area - there are lessons to be learned by all interested from around the world.

I would like to add as well that the close collaboration between the municipality and the university, especially with the group lead by Chris Buckley at University of KwaZulu-Natal has paid off in a big way for eThekwini.

Sustainable practices within this challenging sector are receiving due acknowledgement. For example, Peter Morgan from Zimbabwe with his lifelong work around innovative ecological sanitation and water access was rewarded the Stockholm Water Prize in 2013. And now eThekwini Water and Sanitation in South Africa that provides a diversity of water and sanitation services to both its urban and peri-urban areas is being acknowledged. This includes the world's single largest program in urine diverting dry toilets numbering over 100,000 in number - a major accomplishment that merits its own press release.

Congratulations from SuSanA!!