Ensure Safe Treatment of Fecal Waste from Every Toilet

India has made enormous progress in expanding access to toilets and reducing open defecation. But constructing a toilet does not by itself solve the sanitation problem.

Every toilet produces fecal waste that must ultimately be safely contained, collected where necessary, transported, treated, and either disposed of safely or productively reused. Where this chain breaks down, untreated waste can enter drains, groundwater, rivers, agricultural land, or the surrounding environment.

The challenge is particularly significant in areas that are not connected to underground sewer networks. Households and institutions may depend on septic tanks, pits, or other onsite sanitation systems, but these systems require appropriate emptying and treatment. Simply removing waste from a septic tank and dumping it elsewhere only transfers the sanitation problem from one location to another.

Extending conventional sewer networks and centralized sewage-treatment plants to every settlement may also be financially or technically impractical, particularly in smaller towns, rural areas, informal settlements, remote locations, schools, worksites, and low-density communities.

India therefore needs to move beyond measuring sanitation primarily by toilets constructed and increasingly measure whether the waste generated by those toilets is being safely managed from beginning to end.

The bioloo addresses the following user needs:
• Meet the need for basic, easy-to-install and hygienic human waste disposal mechanism in areas with no infrastructural facilities, such as sewage treatment plants;
• Address the need for a cheaper and easy-to-operate alternative to the traditional waste disposal system;
• No “operation and maintenance”, bioloo only requires regular cleaning, as we do with a regular toilet.

The bioloo is based on the bio-digester technology developed by DRDO (Defense Research and Development Organisation). We are a licensee (transfer of technology) and have partnered DRDO for technology commercialization for large-scale deployment of sanitation solutions.

The bio-digester is a consortium of anaerobic bacteria that have been screened and gradually adapted to work at temperatures as low as -5°C through the isolation of psychrophilic bacteria from Antarctica/Siachen. These act as inoculums (seed material) to the bio-digesters and convert the organic waste into methane and CO2. The anaerobic process inactivates the pathogens responsible for water-borne diseases. Bio-digesters serve as reaction vessels for bio-methanation and provide anaerobic conditions and the required temperature for the bacteria.

The bioloo is a good response to the challenge statement, taking care of all the three thematic areas:
1. Innovative WASH technology for dense informal settlement(s)
The bioloo is affordable, space-efficient, climate-resilient, glocal and scalable.
Every publicly supported sanitation program should require an end-to-end fecal-waste management plan based on a simple principle:

Containment → Collection → Transportation → Treatment → Safe disposal or productive reuse

The appropriate system need not be the same everywhere.

Where functioning sewer networks are available and economically viable, toilets should connect to sewerage systems leading to adequate sewage treatment.

Where conventional sewerage is unavailable or impractical, local governments should develop decentralized sanitation systems using technologies appropriate to local conditions. These could include properly designed septic systems linked to scheduled desludging and fecal-sludge treatment facilities, decentralized wastewater-treatment systems, anaerobic bio-digesters, or other scientifically validated technologies.

Government should set the outcome and performance standards rather than mandate a particular commercial product or technology. Approved systems should meet clearly defined standards for treatment quality, pathogen reduction, environmental safety, reliability, lifecycle cost, maintenance requirements, and safe disposal or reuse.

Local governments should be responsible for mapping how sanitation is currently handled within their jurisdiction, identifying households and facilities not connected to sewer networks, determining appropriate treatment systems, arranging scheduled collection where required, monitoring treatment and disposal, and maintaining records of the sanitation chain.

Private companies, nonprofits and community organizations can provide technology, collection, treatment and other services through competitive and transparent arrangements, while the local government remains accountable for ensuring that fecal waste is ultimately treated safely.

Where treatment produces usable outputs—such as biogas, treated water, soil conditioners or other recoverable resources that meet applicable safety standards—productive reuse should be encouraged where economically and environmentally appropriate.

The objective should be straightforward:

No toilet should be considered part of a complete sanitation system unless there is a safe pathway for the waste it generates.

This approach changes the measure of success from “How many toilets did we build?” to “How much human waste is being safely managed?”

There is already evidence within India that such an approach can work.

Wai, Maharashtra, provides an important example. Rather than waiting for universal underground sewerage, Wai Municipal Council developed a scheduled desludging system for households using septic tanks. The city was divided into service zones, septic tanks were emptied using vacuum trucks according to a schedule, the collected septage was transported for treatment, and service records were maintained.

Government/NIUA documentation reports that during the first five months of scheduled operations, more than 350 septic tanks were emptied and approximately 2.2 million litres of septage were delivered for treatment, with household acceptance exceeding 90%.

The Wai experience also demonstrates an important governance principle: the municipality does not have to perform every function itself in order to remain responsible for the outcome. The municipal council organized and monitored the sanitation system, while private-sector participation was used for service delivery.

India’s national sanitation framework already recognizes fecal-sludge management as involving the safe collection, transportation, treatment and disposal of waste from onsite sanitation systems. The challenge is to make this complete sanitation chain a routine part of implementation and local-government accountability.

Different places will require different solutions. A dense urban neighborhood may require scheduled septic-tank desludging and a fecal-sludge treatment plant, while a remote school or community may be better served by an onsite bio-digester or another decentralized technology.

The policy therefore does not depend on whether one particular technology succeeds everywhere. It creates a framework in which multiple technologies and service providers can compete to achieve a clearly defined public outcome.

Government should not simply count toilets. It should ensure that the sanitation system works from the toilet all the way to safe treatment and disposal or reuse.

This is the version I would publish. It preserves the useful idea submitted by the BioLoo contributor, but turns it into a genuine India We Deserve policy solution rather than an endorsement of his company. Bio-digesters become one possible technology within the framework, which is exactly where I think they belong.