Thanks Rafael for your comments

pawan

Pawan;

Thanks for sharing this interesting handbook devoted to Solid and Liquid Waste Management in Rural Areas. It will be a good reference to rural sanitation practitioners.

Rafael Vera

Dear Elisabeth
The book Technological options for Solid and liquid waste management in rural areas, is not for the toilet/ on-site sanitation. It is meant for the waste water treatment not for toilet options. It does not mention any toilet technology, except septic tank. Septic tank comes under toilet as well as for primary treatment of sewage.
Options of toilet technologies are mentioned in another book – Technical options for on-site sanitation, released by the Ministry of Drinking water and sanitation. It was also written by me in 2012 and is available on the link of india water portal - www.indiawaterportal.org/sites/indiawate...ion-modws-2012_0.pdf
You are right that under option 1 there should be other technologies also in addition to Twin pit toilet for black water and soakage pit for grey water. Objective of the book is treatment of grey water. Soakage pit is the simplest way for individual households for grey water, where water table is not too high. Where other technologies for black water are available, it is equally acceptable. However, its fact that pit (single or double pit) is the most commonly found technology in India. UDDT or composting toilets are also under the guidelines of the MoDWS. Such toilets are also being implemented in some areas under the financial support from different agencies. But their number is too low.
Under different technologies of waste water treatment, we have mentioned their applicability, advantages and limitations/ disadvantages. It is upto the beneficiaries to select the technology as per their affordability and constraints.
The book is targeted to District level and state level officials involved in the field of SLWM. Much details of the technologies is not possible within the scope of the book. I get queries from States when they require further detail of any particular technology. Detail of any technology depends on quantity of waste water, quality of effluent required for different reuse purpose etc.

Regards
Pawan

Dear Pawan,
Thanks for posting this handbook (which we should also put in the SuSanA library). It looks well written, laid out and pleasant to read with many photos and schematics. Congratulations and thanks for sharing!

Could you explain a bit more about the target audience for this book? It is broad, a bit like the Eawag-Sandec Compendium, providing an overview of options, but not with enough detail for people to design or implement the various systems.

However, it seems to have a strong bias on solutions that involve flush toilets, mixed wastewater, sewers and small wastewater treatment plants. That's fine if that's the target group.
I am just a bit baffled that your Option 1 on page 6 is the only one that keeps toilet waste(water) separate from greywater and that's for a twin pit pour flush toilet. I know that is the preferred recommended toilet type of the government of India.

Could you explain a little bit why no mention is made of any other types of simple toilets (without a water seal), in particular urine-diverting dry toilets (UDDTs) or composting toilets? Is that because of the issue with the manual scavenging act in India which lumps pretty much all forms of "dry latrines" together as being "insanitary latrines" (which is not "fair")?

Please also not the discussion I had started with Joe here about manual scavenging in India. I would love to hear your take of the situation here:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/142-go...of-manual-scavenging

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Elisabeth

Edit2: Link above works now, thanks for fixing

Thanks for making us aware!

Dear All

Its my pleasure to inform you all that a Handbook on Technical Options for Solid and Liquid Waste Management in Rural Areas, released by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India, on 21st April,is now available on the website site of the Ministry at-


mdws.gov.in/sites/upload_files/ddws/file...id_Waste_%28E%29.pdf


I had wrote the manuscript of the book while working as a Consultant (Sanitation and Waste Management) with the Ministry till February 2014.
The book was written taking into consideration the socio-economic and cultural aspects of the rural areas and the policy and program of the Ministry to improve SLWM in rural areas. Most of the technologies mentioned in the book are equally suitable for small towns in India and many developing countries.
The book is only 3.4 MB size and can be downloaded easily. Hope, it proves useful for many professionals working in the field.

Regards

Pawan