The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will hold its second workshop, structured to develop an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) International Workshop Agreement (IWA) on Community-Scale Resource-Oriented Sanitation Systems on September 7-8, in Singapore. The IWA will serve as the initial step in developing an international standard for non-sewered sanitation systems.
The first IWA meeting in June 2017 was held in Durban, South Africa, and focused on initial discussions related to the draft document. The second meeting is intended to further develop and revise the draft. According to The World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 2.5 billion people live without access to safe and clean toilets and 1 billion are forced to defecate in the open. These actions can ultimately lead to dysentery-like diarrheal diseases untreated waste sludge that is unsafely disposed of can lead to environmental pollution and accelerate deadly diseases.[See related coverage here].
About the IWA
The goal of the IWA is to create a community-scale resource-oriented sanitation treatment system to ensure safety aspects of next generation treatment systems, by safely processing human waste, and, possibly household waste, and recover valuable resources such as water, energy, and/or nutrients through economically sustainable technologies in an off-grid and non-sewered environment. Such an international standard would enhance efforts to widely manufacture, market and deploy the technology where it is needed most and help achieve safer and cleaner universal toilet access.
This IWA is also a starting point to achieve a standard that would enhance efforts to widely manufacture, market, and deploy the technology where it is needed most. Partners and grantees of the Foundation consist of stakeholders from around the globe, including developing countries. Expert IWA participants are welcome and do not have to be members of ISO or their respective standardization body. The IWA has an expected publication date of March 2018.
As the U.S. member body to ISO, ANSI would serve as the Secretariat of record, and together with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provide logistical support. The IWA will be the first of three proposed meetings scheduled between June 2017 and January 2018, with the next meeting scheduled for September 4-8, 2017, in Singapore. A third meeting to discuss the draft will take place in early 2018.
View the agenda and
Please email Sally Seitz ([email protected]) with any questions or comments on the IWA meeting.