Spotlight on water and sanitation research for World Toilet Day
| 19 November, 2023 | Abbie Nicholson |
19 November 2023 marks the 22nd anniversary of World Toilet Day, established to create action to solve global sanitation challenges. This year focuses on accelerating change to reach UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for all by 2030. Increasing research into and awareness of sanitation issues and solutions is key to achieving this goal. In our blog, we highlight Gates-funded water and sanitation research in honor of World Toilet Day.
Challenges to achieving global access to water and sanitation
The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 as “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere”.
In particular, Sustainable Development Goal 6 aims to improve investments in infrastructure and sanitation facilities; protect and restore water-related ecosystems; and implement hygiene education to ensure universal access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation globally by 2030.
However, World Toilet Day 2023 highlights the need to increase progress five-fold to meet the goal by 2030.
According to the UN, in 2022, 2.2 billion people still lacked safe drinking water; 3.5 billion people lacked safe sanitation; and 2 billion lacked a basic handwashing facility, including 653 million with no handwashing facility at all. This lack of access particularly impacts women, girls, and vulnerable groups.
Additionally, 50% of the global population already experiences severe water scarcity at least one month a year, with water scarcity projected to increase due to climate change.
Investment in water and sanitation programs
As a result of these challenges, water, sanitation, and hygiene are a strategic focus for the Gates Foundation.
These programs seek to “advance promising new toilet and waste treatment technologies, service delivery models, and policies with the greatest potential to revolutionize sanitation standards and practices at the local and national levels”, with $1.5bn in committed grants for water, sanitation, and hygiene since 2006.
A key part of delivering this strategic initiative is funding and sharing water and sanitation research that advances the global sanitation agenda, including a commitment to publishing Gates-funded water, sanitation, and hygiene research openly and transparently, such as via Gates Open Research.
Benefits of open research for researchers
Not only does open research help to improve awareness of, and access to, the latest methods, analyses, and conclusions, it also helps to speed up research advancements.
Publishing all research outputs openly, from data and software to protocols and methods, enables better reproducibility of results and allows others to build on research more easily and quickly in evolving studies.
Similarly, by publishing all research without restriction, including null or negative results, open research reduces unnecessary repetition of previous studies or methods, and instead places focus on conducting new, value-driven research.
Furthermore, publishing research open access can enable deeper collaboration between researchers and stakeholders outside of the scientific community, ensuring research has real-world impact and can be used by policymakers and wider decision-makers for informed, research-led action on sanitation.
Water, sanitation, and hygiene research on Gates Open Research
A number of Gates-funded researchers have already published their water and sanitation research open access with Gates Open Research.
Physico-chemical properties of waste derived biochar from community scale faecal sludge treatment plants
The dumping of untreated faecal sludge from sanitation facilities is a major contributor to poor public health and environmental pollution. As a result, long-term and more sustainable mechanisms to manage untreated faecal sludge are key to improving sanitation.
This Research Article explores turning untreated faecal sludge into different types of biochar, which can be used as a soil enhancer for agriculture while simultaneously improving public health.
Testing for sensory threshold in drinking water with added calcium: a first step towards developing a calcium fortified water
Calcium intake is well below recommendations in most low- and middle-income countries, and in many countries, calcium availability from foods does not cover the needs of their populations. Increasing calcium concentration of water has been proposed as a possible strategy to improve calcium intake.
This Research Article tests adding different levels of calcium into water to identify optimum levels of calcium while maintaining consumer satisfaction with taste and odor.
Isothermal drying characteristics and kinetics of human faecal sludges
To eradicate poor sanitation, on-site sanitation facilities are being developed in many parts of the world. For safe handling, transportation, and environmental quality of faecal waste output, processes such as dewatering, drying, and pasteurization are recommended.
Thermal drying is of specific interest because it can reduce waste volumes and improve the longevity and quality of end-products. The integration of heat can eliminate pathogens and odor with potential health and environmental gains, but the scale of benefits in faecal sludge management will depend on material characteristics and process conditions.
To inform the thermal treatment of faecal sludge, this Research Article investigated the drying characteristics and kinetics of various faecal wastes using thermogravimetric analysis and isothermal heating conditions.
Decentralized solar-powered drinking water ozonation in Western Kenya: an evaluation of disinfection efficacy
The costs of constructing centralized water systems, as well as the costs for operations and maintenance of such systems, are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, far beyond the reach of many low-income countries.
Alternatives, such as point-of-use water treatment are far less costly, but highly variable and often poor quality.
This Research Article explores new methods of decentralized solar-powered systems and their ability to reduce contaminants in water to provide new, alternative water treatment options, using a case study of Western Kenya.
Publish your own Gates research today
If you’re conducting Gates-funded water and sanitation research, join the 3,000+ Gates grantees already publishing their work with Gates Open Research this World Toilet Day and benefit from:
- No author publishing charges
- Open access, open data, and open peer review
- Over 10 different article types
- Article-level metrics and indexation in major indexers such as PubMed and Scopus
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