Household adoption of ecological sanitation : an assessment of agricultural value and user perspectives in Nyanza Province, Kenya

Ecological sanitation, or ecosan, refers to a range of sanitation technologies in which human excreta is recovered and retained on-site, and eventually reused. However, when a culture does not have a tradition of reusing or handling human waste, what would motivate a household within that culture to recycle and reuse their waste? More specifically, how do the agricultural value of the material from an ecosan toilet and user perspectives on ecosan systems influence households' adoption of ecosan toilets? On average, households in the study area produce 4 kilograms of nitrogen and 0.6 kilograms of phosphorous per year from urine collected in the skyloo toilet, the type of urine-diverting ecosan toilet available in the study area in the Nyanza Province, Kenya. These nutrients are the equivalent of a cost savings of about US $12 per year (the GDP per capita in Kenya in 2004 was US $1 100). About two-thirds of the households reuse the processed feces and urine in household gardens. Users reported additional major benefits such as the absence of foul odors, inexpensive construction costs (partly due to a materials subsidy by the promoting NGO), and the aesthetic value/social status that the facility brings to the owners' homes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Robinson, Brian E. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• JoAnn Carmin and Susan Murcott.

• Urban Studies and Planning.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33416

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33416