Dear All,

I'm sending you an update on activities in the Nexus project at CDD Society Bangalore as we are...

...obtaining our second harvest of vegetables grown with wastewater from a DEWATS plant in Beedi Workers Colony, Bangalore

...analyzing the treatment efficiency of a vortex with regard to reuse

...starting the operation of a co-composting plant in Devanahalli (on the outskirts of Bangalore, Karnataka) for the treatment of faecal sludge through thermophilic composting

...evaluating farmers practices of using untreated faecal sludge, e.g. making use of local plants with antimicrobial properties

...exploring the option of using black soldier flies for the conversion of faecal sludge and biowaste into protein

...dealing with a potentially contaminated site for agricultural use where municipal solid waste was deposited

...creating a dialogue between farmers, sanitation and medical professionals

- among many other activities.

The project provides good learning for us and we would be happy to enter into discussion on the topics above, share our experiences and listen to yours.

Please find our newsletters under the following links or on our website cddindia.org/nexus.

www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/Nexus-July-2016.html
www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/Nexus-June-2016.html
www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/Nexus-May-2016.html


Best regards from CDD Society Bangalore

Susanne

Project Nexus

Food Production and Settlement Hygiene in Poor Peri-Urban Regions in India

The three-year-project Nexus started in January 2015 with the overall objectives to:

1. Improve health through reduction in undernourishment and safe sanitation
2. Reduce environmental degradation and protect natural resources
3. Improve living conditions for poor peri-urban communities

The project promotes of safe reuse practices of sanitation products in agriculture.

Key component is the establishment of practical demonstration projects that show various ways of safely reusing sanitation products, from treated as well as untreated water and faecal sludge up to urine and dried faeces from UDDT. This process is supported by a knowledge base, created through an extensive literature review, interdisciplinary expert consultation meetings, guest lectures and trainings on topics related to sanitation, health, nutrition, agriculture, policy and community mobilization.

The demonstration projects are to be established under four main concepts:

DEWATS (Decentralised Wastewater Treatment Systems)
Intervention for enhancing nourishment among children and women in peri-urban communities.

Faecal Sludge Treatment
Intervention for Settlement Hygiene and reuse of treated and co-composted sludge in agriculture

UDDT (Urine Diverting Dry Toilets/”EcoSan”)
Intervention for reuse of EcoSan products in agriculture

Risk Mitigation measures
Intervention in reuse of untreated wastewater in food production

For details on our activities accomplished in 2015, please visit: www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/December-Newslatter-2015.html

Monthly newsletters are up on our webpage (to be found in the bottom of the page): www.cddindia.org/nexus

DEWATS for reuse in Beedi Workers Colony, Kengeri, Bangalore

Within walking distance from CDD Society’s headquarters, a DEWATS now provides irrigation water for 400 square meters of land where vegetables are grown in a peri-urban community. In coordination with the local people’s association and its leader, the infrastructure for agricultural production was created, such as pipelines, storage capacity and a polishing pond to ensure a pathogen die-off prior to irrigation.

The site was designed to answer open questions. One of them is the required retention time for the treated water in the polishing pond under South-Indian conditions to ensure a sufficient pathogen die-off. Another question is about the optimisation of the nutrient content in the water while assuring a reliable hygienization and dealing with limited space for UV-treatment in the pond.

With the CDD’s project partner St. Johns Medical College, the project team was trained on nutrition assessment among children from 0-5 yrs and 6-14 yrs to evaluate the need for food supplements. Furthermore a household survey on nutrition and sanitation has been conducted by students from NIMS College Bangalore.

EcoSan: Reuse of urine and humanure in Tamil Nadu

CDD’s partner organisation EcoPro in Auroville implements UDDT products in. The objective is to ensure the reuse of EcoSan by-products in Tindivanam-Botheri and Kalrayan Hills as an incentive to use UDDT. The potential of these products are is demonstrated against the use of chemical fertilisers.

Challenges faced till now

1.Knowledge
a.monitoring and assessing linkages between sanitation, health and nutrition
b.low awareness among public about the topic
2.Policy
a.grey areas in policy and regulations on reuse
b.limited literature focusing on Indian scenario
c.little research on long term impacts of reuse
3. Planning & Implementation
a.limitations of laboratories that test waste water, sludge, crops
b.operational hurdles in communities and local leaders and institutions due
to low knowledge and therefore interest

For more information, please get in touch under This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Dear all,

next to planning in the project, we are optimizing the polishing pond in one of our demo projects towards aquaculture as complementary use.
Furthermore we organized a training on the practical application of the WHO Safety Sanitation Planning manual held by Biome Solutions from Bangalore.

For more information get in touch with us and visit:
www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/Nexus-Mar-16.html

Best regards,
Susanne

Dear all,

we are happy to announce that we are successfully harvesting safely grown vegetables from fertigation with treated water, preparing for co-composting faecal sludge and that we could be present at the National Conference on Peri-urban Agriculture and Ecosystems in Delhi.

You will find more on this in our Newsletter:
www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/Nexus-Feb-16.html

For any questions, please use the forum or contact us directly: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Best regards,
Susanne

Dear all,

the Nexus project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development within the scope of a special feature “One world – no hunger” of its contribution to achieve food security (BMZ Sonderinitiative „Eine Welt ohne Hunger“).

It was proposed by Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA e.V.), CDD's project partner, who are managing the funds of 600.000 EUR. The project started in January 2015 and continues until the end of 2017. Thank you for asking, Elisabeth.

Under the following links you can find the 2015 annual newsletter
www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/December-Newslatter-2015.html

...and the monthly newsletter from January 2016.
www.cddindia.org/nexus/flyer/January-Newsletter-2016.html

Best regards,

Susanne

Dear Susanne,

Thanks for introducing your Nexus project ("Nexus - Food production and settlement hygiene in poor peri-urban regions in India") here. You have a nice website (www.cddindia.org/nexus/). I couldn't find though:

• What is the project's time period?
• Who is funding it, and how large is the budget?

With that knowledge, we could also include it in the SuSanA project database:
www.susana.org/en/resources/projects

And I see you've done extensive literature reviews. Therefore, you should be in a good position to help with identifying 5 key documents for the sticky posts in the sub-categories on reuse? E.g. did you see this one:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/17-fer...-production-of-crops

Any comments in that thread?
And I would like to set up similar sticky posts with 5 key documents and key links for these two forum sub-categories:

• Greywater, blackwater or wastewater reuse, irrigation, aquaculture
• Safety of reuse aspects, legislation, guidelines, policies

(See which sticky posts I've already set up here: forum.susana.org/key-documents)
Could you help me with those? I only want the Top 5 (for newcomers), not a list of 20 or more.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear forum members,

I hereby would like to present the Nexus project, which is implemented by Consortium for DEWATS Dissemination (CDD) Society in Bangalore, India.

Nexus – Food Production and Settlement Hygiene in Poor Peri-Urban Regions in India - creates the missing link between safe sanitation and food production, reusing the products from various sanitation systems. The goal is to implement a demonstration project for further dissemination and capacity building on practical and safe nutrient recycling.

Please visit our website: www.cddindia.org/nexus/

I am happy to share our experience and the upcoming questions with you, as we proceed!

Best regards,
Susanne