A guide on sustainable development

What is in this guide?

This guide is meant to provide a basic understanding of sustainable development and a practical
guide to sustainable development. It has the following sections:

What is sustainable development?

Striking a balance between preserving our limited natural resources and

overcoming poverty
25% of the population of the world consumes 75% of its natural resources
annually
Sustainable development is beginning to take root globally
People, development and the environment

5.1 The world as an ecosystem

5.2 Natural resources are necessary to sustain life on earth
5.3 Development and its dependence on natural resources
5.4 Sustainable use of resources
5.5 Who uses the most resources?
5.6 Our consumer society
5.7 Population growth and natural resources
5.8 Will the world run out of resources soon?
5.9 Towards sustainable development

A practical guide to sustainable development

6.1 Building homes in such a way that they are warm in winter and cool in summer (thermally
efficient)
6.2 Use energy efficient devices in homes
6.3 Use the right energy source for the right activity
6.4 Composting toilets
6.5 Biogas digesters
6.6 Grey waste water system
6.7 Rainwater harvesting
6.8 Landscaping
6.9 Waste recycling

What is sustainable development?

A definition of sustainable development can be: to meet the basic needs of people today without
ruining the chances of future generations to do the same.

In earlier modules we learnt that development can occur when economies are strong and can
provide for all the people in a country. In South Africa, where so many people are presently
living in poverty, we need economic growth before our economy will be able to provide
sufficient resources to overcome poverty.

Economic growth also has to be greater than population growth otherwise more and more
people will form part of poor. In the greater global environment there is a serious concern
whether economic growth all over the world is sustainable. The main concern is around
environmental issues. As more and more people populate planet they consume more food and
use up more of the earths natural resources. Economies have to grow to look after increasing
numbers of people & economic growth is very often at cost of environmental protection.

Striking a balance between preserving our limited natural resources and

overcoming poverty
In 2002 the World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg. For the
second time (the first summit was in Rio) the world came together to see how the planets
resources could be sustained while at the same time sufficient development could take place to
overcome poverty and underdevelopment.

There are serious resource constraints in the world. Fresh water, clean air, fish stocks, land for
food production and living space are all under pressure because of the world populations
increasing consumption and pollution. Economic development and consumerism also threatens
natural resources like forests, minerals and rivers.

There are no simple answers to how to build sustainable development whilst overcoming
poverty. South Africa has many examples of problems we face to make development
sustainable. We are rapidly increasing the access to water and electricity for poor people. This
will greatly increase amount of water we use and the amount of electricity we have to produce.
As the economy grows there will be increasing pollution and pressure on natural resources.
Government has to balance the need for development with the sustainable use of resources.

25% of population of the world consumes 75% of its natural

resources annually
One of the key issues that affect sustainability is over-consumption by a portion of the worlds
population. At moment about 25% of the worlds population live in relative comfort & consume
a huge percentage of the worlds resources in process. These are the people who live in large
houses, often have at least one car per family, consume highly processed & packaged foods and
luxury consumer goods like TVs, sound systems, air conditioners & so on. They have dozens of
different sets of clothing & spend a lot on leisure activities. They create a huge amount of waste
& pollution & consume more than half the natural resources the whole world uses every year.

A further 35% of the worlds population live in a more sustainable way where they do not over-
consume. These people are characterized by living in small households, often built by using
immediately available natural resources. They tend to use public transport or bicycles and eat
less packaged and refined foods. They do not consume a lot of luxury goods and have only a few
sets of clothing. They do not create a lot of waste.
The last 40% of the worlds population can be classified as under-consumers. These are people
who most often live in rural areas in developing countries. They have only one or two sets of
clothing, use animals or their feet as their main form of transport, often grow their own food and
produce almost no waste. Other than basic items like flour, salt, sugar and oil, they consume
very little that they do not produce themselves.

The people on this planet can survive on the available resources if all of us lived like the middle
35%. Unfortunately, life in top 25% consumes about three quarters (75%) of the natural resources
used annually. If we see overcoming poverty as moving everyone into the same sort of lifestyle
as over-consumers the earth will not be able to sustain development at that rate for very long.

It is very important for us as development workers to consider the impact of development on the
environment and sustainability of any development in terms of environmental and other factors.

Sustainable development is beginning to take root globally

Most countries in the world have accepted that sustainable development is an essential
development pathway & are busy incorporating its principles into their own policies &
programmes. The United Nations has taken sustainable development very seriously & it has
established specialist units to deal with issue & to identify opportunities & activities to support
this development theory.

Sustainable development in itself is not a political theory but it has been recognised that without
political change, sustainable development is not possible. A rampant capitalist society, where the
rich have all access to wealth and resources and where the only thing that matters is economic
growth and profit, cannot support sustainable development. Social democratic states where
issues of peoples health and welfare are paramount in development cycle are better placed to
support sustainable development. This is why the South African political model is well placed to
support sustainable development and ideas encompassed within the sustainable development
debate have begun to be merged with all policies related to development. We are also fortunate
to have a constitution that protects peoples rights to a clean and healthy environment.

Challenge now is to mainstream sustainable development thinking & to find sensible & simple
solutions to our challenges. The beauty about sustainable development is that it really is very
simple & people have been practicing it for centuries. The next section will try to explain a lot of
jargon & give a summary of theory, debates, issues, developments and ideas in simple terms. A
later section will provide learner with examples of programmes where sustainable development
is being implemented and a practical guide for some simple things we can do as individual &
development practitioners to make sustainable development happen in our communities.

People, development and the environment

5.1 The world as an ecosystem
The relationship between people and ecology is very important for how the world survives.
People are a part of large biological system (ecosystem) made up of every living organism in the
world & indeed the universe, which interacts to make life as we know it. These organisms also
interact with non-living parts of nature such as climatic cycles and solid matter. This ecosystem
is carefully balanced & each part is interdependent on the rest. Before industrialisation, this
system was able to deal with its growth & its waste in a way that did not interfere with any other
organisms ability to thrive.

Generally, the richer the person is, the more access he/she has to the earths natural resources &
the greater their ability to disturb the balance of the earth. Indeed, humans have begun to act as
if they control system & can manipulate it, as they want, without any consequences. In this
chapter we will explain how this is not case & that human beings will have to alter their
approach to the way they exist in the world if they want to remain a thriving part of its carefully
balanced ecosystem

5.2 Natural resources are necessary to sustain life on earth

Although this may seem obvious, many of us do not fully consider how important our natural
resources are and how life without them would not exist. We often do not consider what nature
provides for us on a daily basis. Think about life without air, water, light and food.

Natural resources can be classified into those that are renewable and those that are not
renewable. The renewable resources are not limited. For instance sunlight, wind, tidal energy
and wave energy. These are examples of natural resources where we cannot imagine a time
when we will not have an abundance of such resources.

But there are also other renewable resources such as trees, plants, crops, and in fact all growing
matter on earth. These are renewable because they can grow again & again. Our only limitation
in making them grow would be availability of water & land & in extreme conditions, sunlight.

Non-renewable resources are those that are stored in our biosphere in one way or another and
that take many thousands or millions of years to make. Examples of this are all the metals like
iron, aluminium, gold and platinum. More importantly, we use some resources like coal, oil and
gas every day and they are not renewable. When we have used them up, they are gone. They
have taken millions of years to be deposited in the ground and we are digging them up. Some
people have described our use of non-renewable resources like this as squandering the earths
savings. During the 20th and 21st centuries we would have used up most of the earths most
valuable resources and we are not leaving any of these resources for use by future generations.

Water falls into an interesting category all on its own. Fresh water is generated through the
water cycle, of rain, mist, evaporation and snow. It is dependent on the climatic cycles and some
places in the world have more water than others. However, if we mess with our climate, we will
seriously affect our ability to keep on producing the water we need in densely populated areas.
Fresh water supplies are limited on the earth and through our wasting and polluting water, we
are compromising our ability to sustain these resources for the thousands of years to come.

Land is also a natural resource and with an ever-increasing world population, it becomes scarcer.
Since the earliest times, people have fought wars over land. The usefulness of land for
development & to sustain life is also dependent on natural cycles like rainfall and climate. Land
is also power & this power lies in the hands of a few, creating imbalances throughout the world.
These imbalances cause poverty and general decay of quality of life.
5.3 Development and its dependence on natural resources
The distribution of natural resources in the world is not equal or fair. The oil producing countries
like Iraq, the US, Nigeria and other smaller countries like Norway have the greatest share of
fossil fuels while some other countries have no fossil fuel resources to speak of. Water, a valuable
natural resource is scarce in South Africa, but she has abundant coal and sunshine. South Africa
is also richly endowed with other natural resources like metals (gold, platinum), and wildlife.

However, this distribution of natural resources is not the only inequality in the world. The rich
own much more of the natural resources than the poor. Land is generally sold to the highest
bidder; privately owned oil companies like Shell, BP and Texaco own the oil we buy.

Money has become the currency for the purchasing of natural resources, not fairness and equity.
If you are rich you can buy lots of electricity generated through the South Africas vast coal
reserves that cause pollution and environmental degradation. The rich can purchase fresh water
whenever they want yet rural poor walk miles to fetch water, which is often polluted upstream
by farmers and industrialists who use chemicals and wash waste from their processes into rivers.

We are degrading our natural environment every day. Using low-grade coal causes the thick
smoke you see hanging over poor townships in urban areas. Industrial illegal dumping is
common. Rural areas are less affected by this more visible pollution, but continue to suffer in
particular with polluted streams and rivers. The rural poor are forced through circumstances to
denude forests for firewood to cook with. As we pollute our fresh water supply, we need to find
more sources of this scarce resource in our country.

But there is a more serious impact of all our pollution, which is only becoming noticeable over
the past twenty years or so although it was first described as far back as 1827. It is called global
warming or global climate change and it is a direct result of burning massive amounts of carbon
products like coal and oil. This carbon is escaping into the atmosphere and it is causing the
worlds climate to change. It does this by forming a thick layer of gases, which trap the heat of
the earth inside its atmosphere not allowing it to escape. The result of this so-called greenhouse
effect is that the earth climate is changing. We are seeing more droughts in some places,

The United Nations has taken it on, as one of its more serious issues. The UN Framework
Convention on Climate change (UNFCC) was signed in 1992 at the Earth Summit and the Kyoto
Protocol which provides for a method for implementing some of the ideas in the Convention is
being discussed yearly at Special United Nations meetings. The consensus among the scientists is
that our use of fossil fuels is causing the global climate to change and this will have serious
impacts on the ability of the earth to sustain life as we know it.

The impacts of climate change will vary from region to region. The British Weather Office has
predicted that 80 million people in Asia could be flooded due to climate instability and since
their predication there have been floods in Mozambique, Bangladesh and Orissa. Some small
island states might disappear altogether when the polar ice caps start melting and sea levels rise.
The predications for South Africa are:

We will experience more droughts and therefore the deserts will creep closer to settlements
impacting especially on the ability of the rural poor to survive.
This impact will spread to the urban areas as we lose good arable land and even reduction in our
fresh water supply as the rain cycle is interrupted.

The higher temperatures might impact on some diseases like malaria that thrive in warmer
climates.

We will lose some of our valuable biological diversity that is carefully tuned to life on earth as it
is and will not be able to survive and adapt to the warmer climes.

5.4 Sustainable use of resources

The way development takes place at the moment is extremely wasteful of natural resources. We
use 10 litres of water to flush a toilet where mostly sanitation waste is itself only water anyway.
We use coal to generate electricity and we lose 30% of the energy generated to losses that take
place at every point of the generation cycles, transmission, distribution and end use. Other
energy sources are far better for many of our needs and yet we mostly rely on electricity. For
instance, gas is much better for cooking and yet we promote use of electricity for cooking.

In the rural areas, people are far less wasteful of natural resources. This is because they often do
not have access to the type of services that you can get in an urban area. Although we believe
that people should have access to fresh water and a hygienic sanitation system, we must
continue to explore the most efficient ways of providing these.

For instance we should see rain water as valuable and try to keep it on our land for as long as
possible by storing it in rainwater tanks, for example. If we did this, we could save money on the
purchase of water by using it for growing vegetables and even for flushing toilets and cleaning
floors. But in urban areas, we spend millions trying to move water that lands on ground out of
the area through building huge storm water systems and bulk infrastructure. Section 6 of this
guide provides some practical and new idea for dealing with these issues.

A lot of people dont even know how they could save on resources. For instance, insulating a
home can save as much as 40% of the total energy bill of the home! And insulting an electric
geyser with a blanket could save 20-30% of the cost of the electricity used in a home. Energy
efficient lights bulbs are also energy saving (20%). These savings are in real cash, and could make
a big impact on poor households. But we continue to build homes without ceilings and
insulation and we dont provide homes with low flush toilets and showerheads.

Section 6 of this guide is a practical guide for using our natural resources wisely and efficiently.
These measures need to be mainstreamed into development practise where they impact
positively on poverty alleviation and sustainable development

5.5 Who uses the most resources?

It is a fact that it is the rich who pollute the most, not the poor. It is also the rich who use more of
the worlds natural resources, both renewable & nonrenewable. A poor home will use about 150
Kw of electricity per month whereas a middle income home will use as much as 2000 Kws of
electricity.
By far the biggest users of energy resources are industry, which use 45% of all the energy
consumed in South Africa. Although industry only uses about 12% of all the water, agricultural
irrigation uses 51% of all water available.

Atmospheric pollution is mostly a result of industrial discharge, in particular from some of the
more dirty industries like Sasol, Eskom and the petroleum industries in the south-Durban areas.
Vehicles add a lot of air pollution. Residential pollution accounts for about 10% of all discharge.

Rapid urbanization is making a big difference to the use of our resources. More than half of
South Africas populations of 44 million live in urban areas and of these about 70% live in formal
settlements with proper services. Compared with rural dwellers, city people have much higher
levels of consumption of water, energy and manufactured goods. At the same time the
concentration of people in a small area makes it possible to plan properly and deliver services in
a more efficient way. Saving of energy and water on such a massive scale could have an
enormous positive impact. Design of proper transport systems could also mean huge reductions
in pollution levels and the release of greenhouse gases. Section 6 provides some ideas for how
we could alter the development methods to provide solutions rather than problems.

5.6 Our consumer society

The consumption versus production debate is raging in the world. The world could not support
its population if they all consumed like Americans. There are simply not enough resources on
earth to do that. The biggest consumers have to accept that in order to reduce poverty in the
poorer countries, they will have to consume less of everything, not just natural resources in their
pure forms, but also man made products from manufacturing cycles. The following information
is provided to demonstrate clearly disparities & to highlight the urgent need for change.
Development is not just about giving those who have less more; it is about making sure that
future development is done more responsibly. In other words, we should develop so that
protecting, saving and enhancing our natural resources is part of the deal.

The information that follows comes from an organization in the United States called the
Worldwatch Institute, set up to highlight the consumption patterns of the world.

The world today produces & consumes more than ever before. Modern industrial workers now
produce in a week what took their 18th century counterparts four years. Private consumption
expendituresthe amount spent on goods & services at the household leveltopped more than
$20 trillion in 2000, a four-fold increase over 1960.

One quarter of humanity1.7 billion people worldwidenow belong to the global consumer
class, having adopted the diets, transportation systems, and lifestyles that were once mostly
limited to the rich nations of Europe, North America, and Japan. Today, China, India, and other
developing countries are home to growing numbers of these consumers.

Yet the world is one of contrasts. While consumer class thrives, great inequalities remain. As
many as 2.8 billion people on the planet struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and more than
one billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water. The 12% of the worlds
population that lives in North America & Western Europe accounts for 60% of private
consumption spending, while 33% living in South Asia & sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only
3.2%.

People must consume to survive, and the worlds poorest will need to increase their level of
consumption if they are to lead lives of dignity and opportunity. But the world cannot continue
on its current path the earths natural systems simply cannot support it. The economies of
mass consumption that produced a world of abundance for many in the 20th century face an
entirely different challenge in the 21st century: to focus not on the indefinite accumulation of
goods but instead on a better quality of life for all, with minimal environmental harm.

Table 1 Consumer Spending and Population, by Region, 2000. WORLDWATCH

Region Share of World Private Share of World Population
Consumption Expenditures
United States and Canada 31.5 % 5.2%
Western Europe 28.7% 6.4%
East Asia and Pacific 21.4% 32.9%
Latin America and the Caribbean 6.7% 8.5%
Eastern Europe and Central Asia 3.3% 7.9%
South Asia 2.0% 22.4%
Middle East and North Africa 1.4% 4.1%
Sub-Saharan Africa 1.2% 10.9%
Division in spending between luxuries & necessities is growing. Here are some interesting facts:

In 2002, 1.12 billion householdsabout three quarters of the world's peopleowned at least
one television set.

Some 41 million passenger vehicles rolled of the world's assembly lines in 2002, five times as
many as in 1950. The global passenger car fleet now exceeds 531 million, growing by about 11
million vehicles annually.

Consumers across globe now spend an estimated $35 billion a year on bottled water.

In 1999, some 2.8 billion people-two in every five humans on planetlived on less than $2 a day.

In 2000, one in five people in developing world1.1 billion totalsdid not have reasonable
access to safe drinking water.

2.4 billion people worldwide-two out of every five-live without basic

sanitation.
Providing adequate food, clean water, and basic education for the worlds poorest could all be
achieved for less than people spend annually on makeup, ice cream, and pet food.

Table3: Annual Expenditure On Luxury Items in Developed World Compared With Funding
Needed To Meet Selected Basic Needs in Developing World (WORLDWATCH)
Product Annual Social or Economic Goal Additional Annual
Expenditure Investment Needed to
Achieve Goal
Makeup $18 billion Reproductive health care for $12 billion
all women
Pet food in Europe & $17 billion Elimination of hunger & $19 billion
United States malnutrition
Perfumes $15 billion Universal literacy $5 billion
Ocean cruises $14 billion Clean drinking water for all $10 billion
Ice cream in Europe $11 billion Immunizing every child $1.3 billion
5.7 Population growth and natural resources

The world's population is growing fast but the use of resources is growing even faster - at an
exponential rate. In 50 years time, at the current rates of population growth, we expect a 41%
increase in the world population to a staggering 8.9 billion people. If we look at some world
figures from the past 50 years, we can see some trends that are worrying.

Between 1950 and 2000 the following has taken place globally:

ITEM INCREASE
World population 2 x more
Energy use is now 4 x more
Number of automobiles 10 x more
Paper use 7 x more
Wood use 3 x more
Water use 3 x more
Fish catch up 5 x more
Disaster relief budgets 10 x more (due to global climate changes)
5.8 Will the world run out of resources soon?

Most of our energy currently comes from sources that are not renewable, like coal, oil & gas.
Although South Africa has an abundance of coal it does not have not liquid fossil fuel resources
like oil at all. And oil & its by-products (petrol and diesel) are essential for most of our transport
and agricultural equipment. Many experts in the world say that over the next 50 years our oil
resources will be in very short supply and within 30 years we will feel the limitations very
severely. Many people are asking how we can feed 8.9 billion people without these resources
and the doomsday prophets are suggesting that billions of people will die.

If we take action soon and in the right way, we can avoid any catastrophe and set the world on
the right path. The solutions to all of these problems exist and are working in various ways all
around the world. It is up to us to ensure that these practices are promoted and encouraged and
used by development practitioners affordably and efficiently.

5.9 Towards sustainable development

We have now heard about some of the challenges that exist and what they mean to South Africa
and the world. We have also heard that there are solutions to these issues and that they can in
fact be quite simple. Political will, properly trained development practitioners, resources
allocated to alternatives and people working together towards sustainable development can
make it happen. This section will introduce you to some of the history behind sustainable
development and how South Africa is currently placed to implement these measures.

Sustainable Development is a conceptual and practical approach to tackling poverty, social

inequality and environmental degradation and it is a relatively new term and concept. It grew
out of a worldwide movement that recognized that development patterns were focusing on
economic growth and accumulation without considering how this was impacting on our natural
resource base. Little value was placed prior to 1970s on resources like fresh air and clean water. It
is only very recently that humans have begun to understand that the earths bounty was limited
and that we are not utilizing her resources in a way that would allow us to sustain life on earth.

From 1972 onwards the world started waking up & a UN Commission on Environment &
Development was set up after a UN convention was held in Stockholm. This was followed by the
Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 & the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg
in 2002.

The Earth summit resulted in a number of important developments. Firstly the Framework
convention on Climate change was signed, as was the convention on biological diversity. But a
most significant event was the adoption of Agenda 21 ( the agenda for the 21st century), which
outlined in concrete terms ways in which the world could move towards the implementation of
sustainable development practices. Local agenda 21 was described in one chapter of the Earth
Summit report and is dealt with more fully in a later section.

The United Nations has continued to address sustainable development at a very high level and
in 2000 it developed, together with its member states, the Millennium Development Goals.

A practical guide to sustainable development

This is a simple practical guide on how you can implement sustainable development in your
community or home.

Although sustainable development might sound complicated, it is not. The real question is:
how do we make sure that we can all have a good quality of life without disturbing natures
delicate balance, making sure that everyone has a fair share in our resources and that future
generations are assured of the same quality.

This section of the guide gives you practical examples of how to implement sustainable
development and still achieve the stated objective above. This is not complicated science; it is
simple basic, common-sense actions that can make a huge difference. This can be done on an
individual level in your own home, but also in the communities that you are helping to develop.

The great thing about sustainable development is that because it saves natural resources, it
generally saves you, and communities involved in these activities, money too. However, we
might sometimes have to put some additional capital into our in home-building in order to gain
the advantage of spending less money paying for natural resources.

In this guide we deal with:

Building homes in such a way that they are warm in winter and cool in summer
Energy efficient devices
Use the right energy source for the right activity
Composting toilets
Biogas digesters
 Grey waste water system
Rainwater harvesting
Landscaping
Waste recycling

6.1 Building homes in such a way that they are warm in winter & cool in
summer (thermally efficient).
Traditional homes made from mud brick are very much more thermally efficient than cement
brick homes. However, new technologies nowadays allow you to build homes from clay that
have the same strength (or better) than cement. The added advantage is that you use local
resources for this & so it can be cheaper if they are readily available. We should be encouraging
this type of building in rural areas where cement is not readily available and clay is abundant.
Nowadays, through improved technologies we can build houses using clay and yet the house
can look like a standard brick home and even last longer.

By installing a ceiling and putting insulation in the roofs of houses, there can be savings made on
heating homes. Even if the community cannot afford to heat homes, the houses will be warmer.
In a heated home, such ceilings and insulation can save 40% of the energy costs.

Build homes to face the sun i.e. north facing. We all know how lovely it is to walk into a nice
warm sunny room in winter. If we build our homes to face the direction that the sun faces, we
can start off on a winters evening with a warm home already. This is much easier to heat. Large
windows on the north side allow more sun in. In summer, because the sun is higher in the sky,
you can deflect the suns rays very easily by adding in an overhang over the top of the windows.

6.2 Use energy efficient devices in homes

Energy efficient light bulbs last for up to five years and use 30% less electricity. This means that
if you normally pay R30 per month for lighting, you will now only pay R20.

Old fridges use a lot of electricity. So although you might save on the initial cost of the fridge,
you are in fact paying more over a five-year period through increased electricity costs.

If you are heating water with a geyser, remember to put a time switch on or to switch it off
during the day so that it only heats when you need the water. As much as 50% of your energy
bill is from an electric geyser. You can save a lot of money here. Simple things like placing your
heater upright and not perpendicular can also save you money as upright geysers heat more
efficiently. You can also buy a geyser blanket to insulate the geyser so that it does not lose heat.

Remember to switch off all appliances when not in use

6.3 Use the right energy source for the right activity
Gas is better for space heating & cooking than electricity. It gives an immediate heat and you do
not lose money while heating appliances. Also, electricity generation in power plants is very
inefficient and you get losses of energy the whole way down the line. Electricity is good for
fridges, TVs and computers and lighting.
Consider developing technologies that use renewable energies. These include wind, solar &
biogas. Wind energy is especially useful along coastlines. Solar energy is good in most of South
Africa & rural areas have already benefited greatly from establishment of solar home systems.
Biogas (use of biological material to make energy) has great potential in South Africa,
particularly in rural & farming areas.

But it is not only energy that can be saved; we can also save other resources like water in the
ways described below.

6.4 Composting toilets

South Africa is one of 25 countries in a water crisis. Waterborne sanitation is hugely costly in
terms of water use, money and pollution, which is largely unnecessary, as most waste from
toilets is water anyway. The installation of flush toilets and the necessary reticulation from the
individual household to the sewerage treatment plant can cost between R3500 to R5000 per
household plus R100 million upwards for a sewerage treatment plant if none exists in the areas.
By contrast, composting toilets are a dry, non-flush, zero discharge system.

Composting toilets are based on a simple system: air is brought into the waste chamber, thereby
preventing the smelly bacteria from growing it is bacteria that cause the methane smell of the
commonly used pit latrines. Compost toilets require little maintenance and can be easily
designed by a householder if the principles are understood. The only maintenance required is to
clean the compost out every few years. This technology is particularly useful in rural areas
where water supply is limited. It can and has been adapted to urban living and these toilets are
very popular in Sweden.

6.5 Biogas digesters

Another excellent form of sanitation that would appeal to both urban & rural dwellers is a
system based on a biogas digester. Essentially a biogas digester is a septic tank, a closed
sanitation system existing in a particular area & not linked to a complicated sanitation system
requiring treatments works. As many as 200 homes can be attached to a biogas digester & indeed
in some parts of the world this form of sanitation is very popular. There are 11 million biogas
digesters in China.

The sewage waste gets fed into the biogas digester where it gets broken down and enables
methane gas to collect. Methane gas is a very useful source of energy for heating and cooking. It
can be collected & used to heat water, or homes, or to be used directly for cooking. This means
that the home will save money on energy. But benefit to local government is even better. There is
no need to install bulk infrastructure nor build wastewater treatments plants. An additional
benefit of biogas digester is that effluent water can be used for irrigation of fruit trees or other
trees or above ground vegetables. Everybody wins & water resources are protected & enhanced.

6.6 Grey waste water system

Grey waste water is the water that comes from basins and baths as opposed to black water,
which comes from toilets. Grey water can be used again to flush toilets, or it can be filtered to
irrigate gardens. There are many ways of building grey waste water systems. One way is to have
a pipe from your basin lead back into the cistern of the toilet. Another is to create a filtration
system such as single gravel, stone and sand filter.

6.7 Rainwater harvesting

Allowing rainwater to soak into the soil is very important to help replenish groundwater levels.
Harvesting rainwater for household use saves on the amount of potable water you use on tasks
such as gardening, cleaning or flushing toilets.

A good place to harvest water from is the roof and all you need is one gutter down pipe leading
into a closed plastic tank. A mesh over the top of down pipe keeps leaves out. Silt will still enter
rain tank and to make sure that it does not become a problem, tank should have its tap placed at
least 50mm from bottom. The tank itself will be raised off the ground about 300mm so that a
bucket can be placed to collect water. Plastic rainwater tanks can be installed for about R1000.

A local community can also manufacture tin systems quite simply. If tin is used, however, the
water MUST NOT be used for drinking.

6.8 Landscaping
Plants create a more hospitable climate around houses or buildings so well planned gardens are
an excellent tool in sustainable living. Planting deciduous (trees that lose their leaves in winter)
on the west side of a building protects the building form burning heat in summer but allows the
sun to heat building in winter. Indigenous plants are the best to use for water conservation, as
they require very little water compared to alien ones. They also require less modification of soil
and are hardier and more drought resistant.

Mulching (strewing woodchips, grass and plant cuttings, etc. on top of the soil) should be done
on all bare soil and around plants. Mulch allows more water to percolate into the soil and
decrease rate of evaporation considerably. It also helps to build up the fertility in the soil, and
help with increasing the topsoil layers.

Swales (trenches along contours) can be created to ensure that any run-off water (storm water)
filtrates into the ground. By building a small dam you can collect the water and use it later.

6.9 Waste recycling

A lot of what we throw away actually has value. Aluminium cans are made of a valuable non-
renewable resource that has high costs to environment in terms of its mining and manufacture. If
we set up waste recycling schemes we can achieve the following:

Reduced need for rubbish dump sites & landfill space that is expensive to establish and run.

Create a few jobs where people sort and recycle waste.

Allow for re-use & recycling of natural resources like tin, aluminium, paper, glass & plastics.

Community waste recycling schemes are wonderful opportunities for people to get involved in
helping their community and also improving the local environment.