Supporting innovation and safety of sustainable sanitation systems globally, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recently published a revision to ISO 30500, Non-sewered sanitation systems – Prefabricated integrated treatment units – General safety and performance requirements for design and testing. The 2025 revision builds on the previous version of the standard, published in 2018, with improvements reflecting recent testing experience.
Through consensus among 28 participating countries in ISO Project Committee (PC) 305, the revisions to ISO 30500 guide greater efficiency and streamlined processes, while assuring the safety and quality requirements of the sanitation systems remain intact.
How Does ISO 30500 Support Safer Sanitation on a Global Scale?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 1.5 billion people live without access to basic sanitation services, such as private toilets or latrines. The lack of adequate sanitation facilities has devastating global consequences. An estimated 2 billion people worldwide use drinking water sources that are fecally contaminated, and the WHO reported in March 2024 that approximately 444,000 children under five years of age die annually from diarrheal diseases.
ISO 30500 is a voluntary international product standard that helps support cleaner and safer sanitation. The standard addresses basic sanitation needs and promotes economic, social, and environmental sustainability through strategies that may include minimizing resource consumption (e.g., water, energy) and converting human waste to safe output. In non-sewered sanitation systems guided by the standard, the front-end collects, conveys, and fully treats waste, allowing for safe reuse or disposal of the generated solid, liquid, and gaseous output. The crucial distinction of this standard is that the back-end is not connected to a networked sewer system. This practical solution supports better and safer toilets in areas where other sanitation systems are not cost effective, unavailable, or impractical. New sanitation solutions rely on rigorous standards like ISO 30500 to assure the safety, efficiency and sustainability of the systems.
A new ANSI video highlights the benefits of ISO 30500, featuring Zhou Xiokang of Eco-San – the first company to be certified to ISO 30500.
“As we deepened our understanding of ISO 30500 over time, our perspective underwent a fundamental shift,” he remarked. “We believe that ISO 30500 plays an irreplaceable role in improving corporate management, enhancing product quality, increasing brand credibility, expanding into international markets, addressing global sanitation challenges, and fulfilling corporate social responsibility. I feel very fortunate that we are able to grow together with ISO 30500.”
ISO 30500 was developed by ISO PC 305, Sustainable non-sewered sanitation systems. ANSI and ASN (the national standards body of Senegal) served as the twinned secretariats to this committee.
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