Why eco-sanitation

Wherever the Need provides eco-san (composting) toilets that are clean and disease free, and produce valuable fertiliser and compost. We also provide clean water through wells and rainwater harvesting. To ensure that drinking water is not polluted because of a lack of sanitation facilities, sanitation must come first.

Why so much focus on eco-sanitation?

• 2.5 billion people worldwide do not have access to a toilet
• 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water
• Polluted water is the major cause of illnesses such as cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea
• The British Medical Journal, as a result of a survey of its members, announced that sanitation was the most important medical milestone ever

As a result of intestinal illness:

• Four out of ten children in the developing world die before they reach the age of five (that is 5,000 per day)
• 25% of poor people’s income is
  spent on medication
• Half the hospital beds worldwide are filled
  with people ill unnecessarily