Sustainable sanitation

Sustainable sanitation is a sanitation system designed to meet certain criteria and to work well over the long-term. Sustainable sanitation systems consider the entire "sanitation value chain", from the experience of the user, excreta and wastewater collection methods, transportation or conveyance of waste, treatment, and reuse or disposal. The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) includes five features (or criteria) in its definition of "sustainable sanitation": Systems need to be economically and socially acceptable, technically and institutionally appropriate and protect the environment and natural resources.

The purpose of sustainable sanitation is the same as sanitation in general: to protect human health. However, "sustainable sanitation" attends to all processes of the system: This includes methods of collecting, transporting, treating and the disposal (or reuse) of waste.

Increasingly, sustainable sanitation also involves the consideration of climate change related impacts on sanitation infrastructure and behaviour and the resilience of technologies and communities.