Ecological Sanitation and EAUTARCIE

Ecological sanitation is a popular expression these days. It has even produced a neologism: ECOSAN, coined for the first time in 2000. A carryall notion where numerous concerns are expressed, without a clear and coherent guideline.

In most cases, ecological sanitation addresses the following issues, which's relevance is sometimes debatable when you consider the overall perspective.

Water Conservation

Water conservation only has sense when you depend entirely on the public water distribution network. Once you decide to harvest rainwater for whole-house reuse, the situation becomes altogether different.

Pollution Reduction by the Use of Environmentally Friendly Products

The choice of environmentally friendly products (i.e. those that could end up in the wastewater) has sense only when wastewater is conveyed to the sewers or through a wetland plant purification system. The implementation of appropriate biological grey water treatment mitigates the differences between « green » products and the others. Therefore, the choice of « green » products will not be based on domestic pollution issues, but essentially to reduce the impact of their fabrication on the environment. Without proper taxation of products in proportion to their environmental harmfulness, the protection of the environment depends entirely on the individual's motivation. One will have the choice between cheap but polluting products or more expensive «green» products.

Rainwater Reuse for Irrigation, Cleaning and Flush Toilets

Considering the factual analyses and experience of hundreds of thousands of households, partial reuse of rainwater is somewhat wasteful and has limited impact when compared to whole-house reuse.

Bath and Shower Grey Water Reuse for Flush Toilets

The use of shower and bath water to flush the WC poses a series of technical difficulties. In light of these and of the existence of more interesting alternatives, one wonders if the effort is worthwhile.

Wastewater Purification Using Plants

Grey water and black water treatment using plants obeys to the same (bad) principle of conventional sanitation: sanitize to protect the environment. It can be easily demonstrated that the more black waters are treated, the more we pollute and the greater the environmental destruction.

Use of Dry Toilets

The various dry toilets proposed on the market have very different environmental impacts. Some are probably even more polluting that standard WC's.

Ecological sanitation as proposed by the EAUTARCIE concept

The EAUTARCIE concept is one of the possible forms of ecological sanitation, with a distinct feature: instead of doing an inventory of the problems, it rather goes to the source of these problems and proposes efficient, simple and inexpensive solutions. Its other main feature is its holistic approach, which takes into account various environmental impact issues. In short, EAUTARCIE reinstates domestic water-related activities within nature's great cycles: water, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.

EAUTARCIE's strongpoint is the integration of mutually dependent relations that involve water management, plant and animal biomass and their influences on climate change. Once these interdependences are acknowledged, it becomes immediately possible to propose a global program to get humanity out of its food and water shortage problems by means of reclaiming damaged ecosystems. Such a program, much less expensive that current proposals that only address global drinking water issues, would have an impact that could slow or even end climate changes, if done concurrently to a reduction program of global energy consumption.

To continue your reading, go to Failings of current sanitary engineering

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