Department Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development

Faecal sludge treatment is very topical in many humanitarian contexts, especially in dense refugee and internally displaced people (IDP) settlements turning into cities. Pit emptying and adequate disposal or treatment of faecal sludge are often a challenge. Eawag-Sandec’s MEWS group is supporting humanitarian stakeholders in different ways, examples include:

• Development of technical guidelines: Guideline on Lime treatment of faecal sludge for humanitarian contexts in partnership with UNHCR (Geneva Technical Hub) and Oxfam, complemented by a training module on Youtube.
• Advisory consultancies: Imvepi and Bidi Bidi FSTPs in Uganda, and collaboration with IFRC and the Austrian Red Cross on the development of an emergency response unit (ERU)
• Development, testing and validation of tools: The faecal sludge field laboratory in collaboration with the Austrian Red Cross and the Swiss Humanitarian Aid (SDC-HA).

The group can also provide on-demand training on the topic of faecal sludge management.

Other relevant activities of the MEWS group include:

• MEWS is applying their expertise in laboratory research to further refine existing methods, and develop and integrate new methods. Examples include the Volaser and the Sludge Snap App.
• MEWS is adapting previous applied research for scaling-up technologies, together with the books Faecal Sludge Management: Highlights and Exercises and Methods for Faecal Sludge Analysis, to develop detailed engineering design recommendations.