Dayanand Panse on wastewater management.

First I’ll say about the present scenario of the country in terms of water situation. About fifty years back, we used to have about 3000 Cubic Meter of water per person per year. Now it has drastically come down to less than 1900 Cubic Meter of water per person per year. Once this availability of water comes in the range of 1500- 1600 Cubic Meters, the country is normally called as water stressed country. And out of this availability of water, normally 65-75% is required for food and agricultural demand. 10-15% for our daily needs i.e. cooking and sanitation and balances goes for other uses including the industries, energy production. So we have to manage with very little amount of water. With increasing population and urbanization this stress is even more visible now. It is predicted that by 2050, more than 50% of the countries population will be from urban side. Once the rural community becomes the urban community, typically we call them as peri-urban areas, their water demand increases multi-fold. We have seen in many developed nations earlier their water consumption was more than 300 liters of per person per day, with great effort they brought it down to less than 150 liters. They reduced their water demands by almost 200 liters per person per day, in spite of them having abundance of water.

Why should we waste our precious water? As we all know that today’s sanitation (waste water system) is very water centric system. We call them ‘flush and forget’. One person, even he goes for urination, he uses more than 10 liters of water for flushing. And what happens next? We do not know. Most of the time it is not treated, it gets contaminated and further it goes down to the streams and rivers. Because of the non-treatment of the wastewater even the rivers get polluted.

Every individual has to keep in mind that he/she should bring down his or her water uses and avoid creating more wastewater.

It can be very simple; actually government should come with a law of dual system, with every toilet wherever there is a flush tank. In the dual system we have a half flush and full flush. So for urination only 3 or 5 liters should be flushed and for defecation it will 7 to 12 liters. But if there is no law, people are quite lazy so they wont change the system even when the dual systems are available in the market.

To make it simpler, and cost effective, one can put 1 or 2 liters of empty plastic bottle inside the system. The mineral water bottle; which we normally throw - thus causing environmental hazard - will save at least 2 liters of water everytime we flush. The water in the bottle will not get flushed. This should be propagated in the large apartment buildings and societies.

Certain rubber washers are available, which can be fitted in the tap to control the flow of water. The opening of the tap can be minimized. There by, one can save the water and produce less amount of wastewater.

We should have some innovative solutions and not to go blindfolded behind the water centric system and that is what ecological sanitation is all about.

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