Ecological & Sustainable Sanitation

Spoiler Warning!
This thread involves some poop talk. If you are squeemish, you may want to pass.


Now that I got that out of the way...........I found this interesting website on ecological sanitation called EcoSanRes with a motto of "Closing the Loop on Sanitation".
This group is based in Sweden and is involved in setting up sustainable sanitation systems in both developing and developed nations.

http://www.ecosanres.org/

Did you know that the UN General Assembly has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation?

Check out the map of EcoSan initiatives:
http://www.ecosanres.org/map/index.html

Here's a global perspective:
"Worldwide 2.6 billion individuals live without sanitation. Another 2.8 billiong individuals live with some type of sanitation, mostly pit latrines, of which many are unhygenic and contaminate the human and natural environments. About 1.1 billion individuals have water sewage of which 30% are connected to an advanced sewage treatment facility and the remaining 70% are sources of downstream contamination.................

...........water shortages affect more than 40% of the world's population in over 80 countries. Additionaly, water- based sanitation discharges untreated sewage into rivers and other bodies of water and causes severe pollution problems around the world........

..........90% of towns and cities in developing countries lack sewage treatment. Developed countries face the same problem. Only 80 out of 600 large European Union cities have advances/tertiary treatment. Another acute problem is contaminated sludge from conventional treatment facilities."


"According to a poll of more than 11,000 readers worldwide, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says that sanitation is the greatest medical advance since 1840, the year that the BMJ was born."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/61214.php

An interesting article on Pee-cycling. Do you know the size of your pee-print?
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19225831.600-peecycling.html

If you are still with me at this point, I'm curious as to how many folks reading this live in areas that allow or might allow composting toilets?