The UK regulations are essentially risk based, with additional "good practice" recommendations of the type of crop treated sludge can be spread upon. In practice these are effectively law as permission will not be given without satisfying the regulator that they have been considered.

In effect there are additional barriers as the large buyers of agricultural produce refuse to buy produce that has come into contact with sewage sludge.

What is not entirely clear is what would happen if you were to operate your own latrine on your own land, treating only your own sludge. The regulator has tried to argue that these should come under the same regulations, but composting toilets are fairly regularly used without permission. In practice, the suspicion is that small composting toilets are usually considered to be low risk - and users are only normally in trouble with the regulator if something goes spectacularly wrong.

Hi Carlos,

When there is no legistlation about feces and urine reuse, which is very often the case, you can use, as a basis, the parameters for fecal sludge reuse (from fecal sludge treatment stations of from "hygienised" sludge from WWTP). In several countries you have norms to allow reuse of fecal sludge in agriculture, I am sure Chile also has guidelines for sludge.
In France there are also two norms NF 44 51 and NF4 95 to garantee the quality of compost use in agriculture including compost made from animal manure (wiki.laboratoirelca.com/index.php/NF_U_44-051). Human manure is not part of it but I guess what is important is to make sure what comes out of the compost is safe and not so much what comes in !
Best regards,

Hello everybody

Thank you Carlos for taking on this topic (and congratulations to your work - I hope we get to talk more about it). At x-runner we just are about to dig deeper into the topic of regulations and it would be wonderful if some of us could agree to create together a document that lists the different countries and regulations. Is there somebody in the community that is very knowledgable in the regulation sector and could create an outline of what we would need to list? I am working together with a engineer from Lima on creating an overview of the Lima composting landscape and regulation will be part of this paper. I will gladly share this as soon as we are done with it!

Hi all,

Carlos so good to hear from you on this forum and thank you Elisabeth for alerting to this to my attention. Everyone should check out the great work Carlos and his team are doing at www.bischile.org/.

Carlos I'm glad you are taking the next step on this. We can definitely touch base offline as well. Here's a quick response:

You've hit on a big need in the sanitation community! There needs to be a comprehensive compilation of country standards and regulations regarding use of human waste and urine. If anyone knows of these please send out the resource!

My guess is many large suppliers that send crops to the US will have to abide by the US standards. Here is a great article that details those standards and their developments www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/07/182...-treated-human-waste.

I've also attached a couple articles about sanitation access that may be helpful

Also we can chat more about this offline but folks that may also be helpful in terms of local regulations:
Dr. Pabon at UAI This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dr. Guillermo Donoso Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Dr. Pedro Serrano This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Keep up with all the great work Carlos! Give my best to the BIS team and let me know if I can be of further help!

Dear Carlos, Elisabeth and everyone,

I would be glad to translate from Spanish to English for Carlos, if he likes.

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday

Dear all
We have been working in Sweden with legislation with this field at all levels for more that 20 years.
As a matter of fact driving forces to ensure that "WHO guidelines and similar legistlation" is translated and applied into the Swedish context is the Swedish Federation of Farmers. A result of the collaboration between the Swedish Federation of Farmers engagement and concerned municipal environmental departments working towards the goal 0 phosphor leakage into water bodies (in particular the Baltic) is the certification of safe urine and blackwater for productive use.

This is a big achievement since the farmers now can sell their products produced with safe urine and blackwater on the Swedish market. The regulatory body for marking Swedish produced food has accepted certified urine and blackwater as a biological fertilzer. We have another very recent interesting policy brief on the instutionalization of productive sanitation. It was produced 2012 www.siani.se/sites/clients.codepositive....reuse_130204_web.pdf

This policy brief should be available at the SuSanA library as well, I believe.

All the best from Sweden,

Madeleine

Florian's response reminded me of an interesting document which could be of relevance here:

www.susana.org/lang-en/library?view=ccbktypeitem&type=2&id=1265

Sanitation policies and regulatory frameworks for reuse of nutrients in wastewater, human excreta and greywater
Proceedings from SEI/EcoSanRes2 Workshop in Sweden

Summary:

Sanitation policies and regulatory frameworks are important tools and key elements when promoting and implementing sustainable sanitation including reuse of nutrients in wastewater, human excreta and greywater. The workshop participants represented all parts of the world and a major experience in the field of sustainable sanitation. This led to presentation of many interesting case-studies and elaborated discussions during the workshop. Sanitation policies in different forms and at different levels are in place in most countries. Very few of these policies contain the concept of closing the loop and formulate requirements regarding the reuse of nutrients from human excreta and wastewater. The countries where closed-loop approaches have reached all the way into legislation are easily counted. Many countries, NGOs, scientists and donors are currently working in the field of policy and legislation, but there is a lack of examples of implemented policy where the reuse aspect is fully integrated in policy and advocacy. As the interest for sustainable sanitation is growing and the reuse aspects are gaining ground it is important to learn from some of the ongoing and upcoming initiatives. This has to some extent been done in the workshop that is documented in these proceedings and the picture materials that is associated.

SEI (2009). Sanitation policies and regulatory frameworks for reuse of nutrients in wastewater, human excreta and greywater - Proceedings from SEI/EcoSanRes2 Workshop in Sweden. Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden.

Legislation on feces/urine use for fertilizer can be a quite tricky issue, it very much depends on the existing legal framework in your country. Finding examples of other countries may of course be useful, but normally these examples can't be transferred easily to another location.

As a starting point, I'd recommend you to do a proper analyis of the present legislation in your country. Although feces/urine is probably not explictely covered, there may still be pieces of legislation that actually apply to these materials eventhough they were originally aimed at other materials such as solid waste, compost, fertilisers, sewage sludge, sewage, etc.

Then, when it is about developing new regulations, be it on national or local level, the WHO-guidelines are certainly of help, because they intend to do exactly this: provide guidance for developing national policies and regulations adapted to the respective context.

Best, Florian

Dear Carlos,

I am trying to understand what you need, but am finding it difficult to follow you (perhaps it is a language issue? How about you write in Spanish and we try out how well the Google Translater works (accessible at the top right)).

You wrote:

for he wanted some data on countries that have legislated on the subject.

Who is "he"?

You wrote:

Unfortunately, the World Health Organization has just issued recommendations, which is on a smaller scale than what is required for validation shall carry out, at the country level in Chile.

Which recommendations by WHO do you mean, can you send me the link?

In your e-mail you seem to mix up validation (i.e. that faeces work as a soil conditioner) and legislation about the safety aspects. The fact that dried or composted faeces work as a soil conditioner is well proven. You will find plenty of documents in the SuSanA library, e.g. if you search by author Peter Morgan (who just won the World Water Price!).

Legislation is a different thing. Here you should look at legislation in your country for compost of for biosolids from sludge. If you want to do it on a big scale then you probably anyway need post-treatment of the faeces from UDDTs - for example by composting.

For this, the case study of UDDTs at a large scale in El Alto, Bolivia, should be useful for you. (they will also have materials in Spanish for you)
See here on the forum where this case was introduced, feel free to ask Kim questions there:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/34-uri...el-alto-city-bolivia

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Well, I searched Ecosanres publications, and experiences in the world and made ​​the subject of UDDT, but still I can not find any official rules, available to validate the feces and urine as fertilizer, for he wanted some data on countries that have legislated on the subject. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization has just issued recommendations, which is on a smaller scale than what is required for validation shall carry out, at the country level in Chile.

Thank you very much for your interest in helping
Greetings!

Hello,
Well, you only partially answered my questions. What search methods have you used so far and what have you found?
Whilst there are plenty of publications on the beneficial use of faeces (and urine) on crop production (see SuSanA library, www.susana.org/library), I am not aware of any specific legislation for it. The closest I can think of are the WHO Guidelines from 2006 but you must have found them already.

www.susana.org/lang-en/library?view=ccbktypeitem&type=2&id=1004
WHO (2006). WHO Guidelines for the Safe Use of Wastewater, Excreta and Greywater - Volume IV: Excreta and greywater use in agriculture. World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, Switzerland.

One way would be to find the existing national guidelines for biosolids or sludges from conventional wastewater treatment plants and then see if they could be applied or modified.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Elizabeth,
I'm looking for information on existing legislation in the world in terms of the use of feces and urine from UDDT's for crop improvement.
Mainly looking for these waste parameters required by any national or municipal regulation. This research is being conducted in Chile, to the need to validate the dried feces as a non-harmful to the health of those who eat food grown with this fertilizer.


From already, thank you very much for the help.
Greetings!