Having a toilet is only the start. For sanitation to be safe, the toilet also has to be emptied safely, and the waste taken away and treated.
This paper, The Role of Emptying Services in Provision of Safely Managed Sanitation: A Classification and Quantification of the Needs of LMICs, looks at 722 million household toilets, including pit latrines and septic tanks, across six Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) regions.
It estimates that:
- 32% can be emptied by mechanized means
- 50% can only be emptied by non-mechanized means
- 18% are unemptiable
The findings are useful for policymakers, donors, practitioners and technology developers working to improve emptying services and reach safely managed sanitation.
Read the full paper to explore the findings and their implications for sanitation service delivery and technology development.
Authors: Nicola Greene, Sarah Hennessy and Tate W. Rogers of Triangle Environmental Health Initiative (opens in a new tab) and Jocelyn Tsai and Francis L. de los Reyes III of North Carolina State University. Published in the Journal of Environmental Management, 2021
