Sustainable Sanitation Solutions: Addressing SDG 6 Water and Sanitation Goals
| 3 November, 2025 | Jack Nash |
Every day, 2 billion people worldwide lack access to safely managed sanitation facilities at home. This stark reality represents one of the most pressing yet unaddressed challenges of our time, affecting not just individual health but entire communities’ economic and social development.
Sanitation research sits at the intersection of public health, engineering, and social science, offering evidence-based solutions to problems that have persisted for generations. When we understand how pathogens spread through inadequate waste management systems, or how cultural practices influence toilet adoption, we can design interventions that actually work in real-world settings.
What makes sanitation research particularly valuable is its ripple effect. Better sanitation doesn’t just prevent disease; it keeps children in school, allows women to participate more fully in economic activities, and reduces healthcare costs for families already living in poverty. Each research breakthrough brings us closer to understanding how to create lasting change rather than temporary fixes.
The Gates Foundation has long recognized that sustainable progress requires more than just building infrastructure—it demands deep scientific understanding. Through partnerships with researchers worldwide, the Foundation supports studies that examine everything from innovative toilet technologies to the complex behavioral factors that determine whether sanitation programs succeed or fail.
In the following blog post, we highlight a selection of key sanitation research published on Gates Open Research that aims to improve our understanding of sanitation needs across the globe.
Physico-chemical properties of waste derived biochar from community scale faecal sludge treatment plants
The dumping of untreated fecal sludge from non-sewered onsite sanitation facilities causes environmental pollution and worsens public health outcomes in developing countries. Long-term solutions to treat fecal sludge from these facilities are necessary to address the global sanitation crisis and achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which aims to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for everyone by 2030. Pyrolysis of fecal sludge kills pathogens and produces biochar, which can be used as a soil enhancer.
The following research article examines the physio-chemical properties of biochar generated from fecal sludge at three treatment plants in India, highlighting its potential as a soil enhancer. The study found that all biochars had low specific surface areas, high alkaline pH levels, and high ash content, with slight differences in mineral composition and structural features among them.
Read the full Research Article here.
Decentralized solar-powered drinking water ozonation in Western Kenya: an evaluation of disinfection efficacy
The costs of building centralized drinking water treatment and distribution systems, as well as the expenses for their operation and maintenance, amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, making them unaffordable for many low- and middle-income countries. Point-of-use (POU) water treatment has been used as an alternative to centralized treatment in such settings. However, there is also a third option: decentralized treatment. The following Research Article evaluates a decentralized solar-powered water treatment system in Kisumu County, Kenya, which uses ozonation to disinfect highly contaminated surface water. The system effectively reduced turbidity and eliminated detectable levels of E. coli, but further research is needed to assess the system’s limitations, scalability, and economic viability for wider use.
Read the full Research Article here.
Feasibility of increasing calcium content of drinking tap water following quality regulations to improve calcium intake at population level
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. Appropriate calcium intake has shown many health benefits besides the prevention of osteoporosis, such as reduction of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol values, lower blood pressure in children whose mothers were supplemented with calcium during pregnancy, and prevention of recurrence of colorectal adenomas.
Food fortification is an effective strategy that has been successfully used to reduce micronutrient deficiencies. Increasing the calcium concentration of water is a possible strategy to improve calcium intake. Although there are natural mineral waters with high calcium contents on the market, calcium concentration in tap water and commercially bottled water is low in most parts of the world. There are many advantages to using water as a fortification vehicle, as it is universally consumed, and it is consumed throughout the day, which also improves calcium absorption.
The following Research Article, published on Gates Open Research, investigates the feasibility of increasing calcium content in tap water to enhance calcium intake, which is often below recommended levels. It demonstrates that adding calcium chloride can significantly raise calcium concentration in drinking water while adhering to Argentine regulations, suggesting a potential regulatory approach to improve public health.
Read the full Research Article here.
Publish your Gates Foundation-funded research today
If you’re conducting Gates-funded water and sanitation research, join other Gates grantees already publishing their sanitation and water research with Gates Open Research this World Toilet Day and benefit from:
- No author publishing charges
- Open access, open data, and open peer review
- Article-level metrics and indexation in major indexers such as PubMed and Scopus
Find out more and submit your research today. Please note that all publications on Gates Open Research are initially posted as preprints on VeriXiv, the Gates Foundation’s preprint server. Peer review is carried out on the VeriXiv platform, and once an article passes peer review it is then published as a final version on Gates Open Research. As a Gates grantee, you can preprint all of your Gates-funded work on VeriXiv, and submit to any other external journals for peer review. For more information about the Gates Foundation’s revised Open Access policy, please visit this link.
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