Sanitation 

refers to public health conditions related to clean drinking water and treatment and

disposal of human excreta and sewage. It generally refers to the provision of facilities and
services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces. The word 'sanitation' also refers to the
maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater
disposal."
Sanitation includes all four of these technical and non-technical systems: Excreta management
systems, wastewater management systems (included here are wastewater treatment plants), solid
waste management systems as well as drainage systems for rainwater, also called storm water
drainage.

Despite the fact that sanitation includes wastewater treatment, the two terms are often used side
by side as "sanitation and wastewater management".

Sanitation technologies may involve centralized civil engineering structures like sewer

systems, sewage treatment, surface runoff treatment and solid waste landfills. These structures
are designed to treat wastewater and municipal solid waste. Sanitation technologies may also
take the form of relatively simple onsite sanitation systems. This can in some cases consist of a
simple pit latrine or other type of non-flush toilet for the excreta management part.

The "sanitation chain" involves the experience of the user, excreta and wastewater collection
methods, transporting and treatment of waste, and reuse or disposal. All need to be thoroughly
considered.[22]

Preventing human contact with feces is part of sanitation, as is hand washing with soap.

Sanitation systems aim to protect human health by providing a clean environment that will stop
the transmission of disease, especially through the fecal–oral route.
 For example, diarrhea, a main cause of malnutrition and stunted growth in children, can be
reduced through adequate sanitation. There are many other diseases which are easily transmitted
in communities that have low levels of sanitation, such as ascariasis (a type of intestinal worm
infection or helminthiasis), cholera, hepatitis, polio, schistosomiasis, and trachoma, to name just
a few.
A range of sanitation technologies and approaches exists. Some examples are community-led
total sanitation, container-based sanitation, ecological sanitation, emergency sanitation,
environmental sanitation, onsite sanitation and sustainable sanitation. A sanitation system
includes the capture, storage, transport, treatment and disposal or reuse of human excreta and
wastewater.
Reuse activities within the sanitation system may focus on the nutrients, water, energy or organic
matter contained in excreta and wastewater. This is referred to as the "sanitation value chain" or
"sanitation economy".

 The sanitation ladder defined by the Joint Monitoring Programme in 2016 starts at open
defecation and moves upwards using the terms "unimproved", "limited", "basic", with the
highest level being "safely managed". This is particularly applicable to developing countries.
Sanitation is a global development priority and the subject of Sustainable Development Goal 6.
[9]
 The estimate in 2017 by JMP states that 4.5 billion people currently do not have safely
managed sanitation.[9] Lack of access to sanitation has an impact not only on public health but
also on human dignity and personal safety.

Types and concepts (for excreta management)

The term sanitation is connected with various descriptors or adjectives to signify certain types of
sanitation systems (which may deal only with human excreta management or with the entire
sanitation system, i.e. also greywater, stormwater and solid waste management) – in alphabetical
order:
Basic sanitation
This is defined as the use of improved sanitation facilities that are not shared with other
households. A lower level of service is now called "limited sanitation service" which refers to
use of improved sanitation facilities that are shared between two or more households.[9]
Container-based sanitation

Container-based sanitation (abbreviated as CBS) refers to a sanitation system where toilets

collect human excreta in sealable, removable containers (also called cartridges) that are
transported to treatment facilities.This type of sanitation involves a commercial service which
provides certain types of portable toilets, and delivers empty containers when picking up full
ones. The service transports and safely disposes of or reuses collected excreta. The cost of
collection of excreta is usually borne by the users. With suitable development, support and
functioning partnerships, CBS can be used to provide low-income urban populations with safe
collection, transport and treatment of excrement at a lower cost than installing and
maintaining sewers. In most cases, CBS is based on the use of urine-diverting dry toilets.
Community-based sanitation
Community-based sanitation is related to decentralized wastewater treatment (DEWATS).
Decentralized wastewater systems (also referred to as decentralized wastewater treatment
systems) convey, treat and dispose or reuse wastewater from small and low-density communities,
buildings and dwellings in remote areas, individual public or private properties. Comparison to
centralized systems[edit]
Centralized wastewater systems are the most widely applied in well-developed urban
environments and the oldest approach to the solution of the problems associated with
wastewater. They collect wastewater in large and bulk pipeline networks, also referred
as sewerage, which transport it at long distances to one or several treatment plants. Storm
water can be collected in either combined sewers or in a separate storm water drains. The latter
consists of two separate pipeline systems, one for the wastewater and one for the storm water.
The treated effluent is disposed in different ways, most often discharged into natural water
bodies. The treated effluent may also be used for beneficial purposes and in this case it is
referred as reclaimed water.
The main difference between decentralized and centralized systems is in the conveyance
structure. In decentralized systems the treatment and disposal or reuse of the effluent is close to
the source of generation. This results in a small conveyance network, in some cases limited only
to one pipeline. The size of the network allows for applications of different conveyance methods,
in addition to the well-known gravity sewers, such as pressurized sewers and vacuum sewers.
The quantity of the effluent is low and is characterized by significant fluctuations.

Community-led total sanitation

Community-led total sanitation (CLTS) is an approach used mainly in developing countries to
improve sanitation and hygiene practices in a community. The approach tries to achieve behavior
change in mainly rural people by a process of "triggering", leading to spontaneous and long-term
abandonment of open defecation practices. It focuses on spontaneous and long-lasting behavior
change of an entire community. The term "triggering" is central to the CLTS process: It refers to
ways of igniting community interest in ending open defecation, usually by building
simple toilets, such as pit latrines. CLTS involves actions leading to increased self-respect and
pride in one's community. CLTS takes an approach to rural sanitation that works without
hardware subsidies and that facilitates communities to recognize the problem of open defecation
and take collective action to clean up and become "open defecation free".
Dry sanitation[
The term "dry sanitation" is not in widespread use and is not very well defined. It usually refers
to a system that uses a type of dry toilet and no sewers to transport excreta. Often when people
speak of "dry sanitation" they mean a sanitation system that uses urine-diverting dry
toilet (UDDTs).[30][31][32]
Ecological sanitation
Ecological sanitation, commonly abbreviated as ecosan (also spelled eco-san or EcoSan), is an
approach to sanitation provision which aims to safely reuse excreta in agriculture.[33] It is an
approach, rather than a technology or a device which is characterized by a desire to "close the
loop", mainly for the nutrients and organic matter between sanitation and agriculture in a safe
manner. One of the aims is to minimise the use of non-renewable resources. When properly
designed and operated, ecosan systems provide a hygienically safe system to convert human
excreta into nutrients to be returned to the soil, and water to be returned to the land. Ecosan is
also called resource-oriented sanitation.

Emergency sanitation
Emergency sanitation is the management and technical processes required to provide sanitation
in emergency situations. Emergency sanitation is required during humanitarian relief operations
for refugees, people affected by natural disasters and internally displaced persons.There are three
phases of emergency response: Immediate, short term and long term.In the immediate phase, the
focus is on managing open defecation, and toilet technologies might include very
basic latrines, pit latrines, bucket toilets, container-based toilets, chemical toilets. The short term
phase might also involve technologies such as urine-diverting dry toilets, septic
tanks, decentralized wastewater systems. Providing handwashing facilities and management of
fecal sludge are also part of emergency sanitation.
Environmental sanitation
Environmental sanitation encompasses the control of environmental factors that are connected
to disease transmission. Subsets of this category are solid waste management, water
and wastewater treatment, industrial waste treatment and noise pollution control.
Fecal sludge management.

Fecal sludge management (FSM) (or faecal sludge management in British English) is the storage,
collection, transport, treatment and safe end use or disposal of fecal sludge.[35] Together, the
collection, transport, treatment and end use of fecal sludge constitute the "value chain" or
"service chain" of fecal sludge management. Fecal sludge is defined very broadly as what
accumulates in onsite sanitation systems (e.g. pit latrines, septic tanks and container-
based solutions) and specifically is not transported through a sewer. It is composed of human
excreta, but also anything else that may go into an onsite containment technology, such as
flushwater, cleansing materials (e.g. toilet paper and anal cleansing materials), menstrual
hygiene products, grey water (i.e. bathing or kitchen water, including fats, oils and grease),
and solid waste. Fecal sludge that is removed from septic tanks is called septage.
It is estimated that 2.4 billion people still lacked improved sanitation facilities including 660
million people who lack access to safe drinking water as of 2015
Onsite sanitation
Onsite sanitation (or on-site sanitation) is defined as "a sanitation system in which excreta and
wastewater are collected and stored or treated on the plot where they are generated". [22]: 173  The
degree of treatment may be variable, from none to advanced. Examples are pit latrines (no
treatment) and septic tanks (primary treatment of wastewater). On-site sanitation systems are
often connected to fecal sludge management (FSM) systems where the fecal sludge that is
generated onsite is treated at an offsite location. Wastewater (sewage) is only generated when
piped water supply is available within the buildings or close to them.
A related term is a decentralized wastewater system which refers in particular to the wastewater
part of on-site sanitation. Similarly, an onsite sewage facility can treat the wastewater generated
locally.
Safely managed sanitation
Safely managed sanitation is the highest level of household sanitation envisioned by
the Sustainable Development Goal Number 6.[41] It is measured under the Sustainable
Development Goal 6.2, Indicator 6.2.1, as the “Proportion of population using (a) safely
managed sanitation services and (b) a hand-washing facility with soap and water”.
Safely managed sanitation is defined as an improved sanitation facility which is not shared with
other households, and where the excreta produced is either treated and disposed in situ, stored
temporarily and then emptied and transported to treatment off-site, or transported through a
sewer with wastewater and then treated off-site.[42] In other words, safely managed sanitation is a
basic sanitation service where in addition excreta are safely disposed of in situ or transported and
treated offsite.[9]