A new International Organization for Standardization (ISO) International Workshop Agreement (IWA) 28 will help ensure safety, performance, and sustainability for safer sanitation and greater public health and support people who lack access to adequate sanitation systems. IWA 28 was developed and approved over a series of three international workshops hosted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
ANSI - as the secretariat to ISO PC 318 - is calling on global participants to join ISO PC 318, which will meet for the first time on July 16-19, 2018, in Dakar, Senegal. All interested stakeholders can contact their national standards body or Sally Seitz, PC 318 secretary, ANSI, at [email protected].
As part of a long-term effort to support better sanitation systems across the planet, ANSI, the U.S. member body to ISO, has facilitated workshops to support the development of new tools and technologies that address every aspect of sanitationfrom waterless, hygienic toilets that do not rely on sewer connections to pit emptying to waste processing and recycling.
While 2.3 billion people do not have basic sanitation facilities such as toilets or latrines, collaborative efforts to reverse the trend include new technologies for community-scaled faecal sludge treatment units, which work to treat the waste at a community level, even in areas where there are no suitable wastewater treatment systems in place.
The new IWA released in April 2018, is a first step to develop an international standard, and helps ensure the safety of these units, based on internationally agreed guidelines.
IWA 28:2018 Faecal sludge treatment units Energy independent, prefabricated, community-scale resource-recovery units Safety and performance, specifies requirements and test methods to ensure safety, performance and sustainability of community-scale resource-oriented fecal sludge treatment units that serve approximately 1,000 to 100,000 people.
In related efforts, the newly formed ISO Project Committee (PC) 318, Community-scale resource-oriented sanitation treatment systems, which currently has 12 participating member countries and 11 observing member countries, will build on the information and expertise gathered to develop IWA 28. The committee will be focused on the development of a new ISO standard for fecal sludge treatment systems, to ensure they meet general performance, safety aspects, and sustainability requirements.
"These sanitation treatment units have the potential to save many lives and improve the health of millions of people around the world, yet there is currently no International Standard that contains commonly accepted criteria by which to measure their performance," said Raymond Lee, chair of the workshop that created IWA 28.
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