World Toilet Day and IRC’s sustainable sanitation vision

Published on: 18/11/2013

On World Toilet Day, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre advocates long term solutions for world-wide sanitation problems.

“Sanitation is a fundamental human right. Yet, 2.5 billion people do not have access to sanitation ”, says IRC CEO Patrick Moriarty in a video message. “And behind this challenge, there is an uncounted number of people who have access to lousy services. And that’s what we see as a waste of investment and human potential”.

IRC aims for long-term sanitation services for everybody, no matter who you are or where you live, every day of the year. We don’t build or empty toilets ourselves; we work with governments and development partners to achieve this. 

We believe that sanitation services should gradually shift their focus from increasing access and use to maintenance of toilets and safe disposal and reuse of faecal sludge.

How can this be achieved? There is no clear-cut answer. Sanitation service models can differ per country, guided by national policies and legal frameworks.

IRC has developed a framework for the delivery of non-sewered sanitation services that last, are accessible to all and are at scale.

Our sanitation experts have compiled a reference guide on low-cost sanitation for non-sewered sanitation service models, SanPack for short.

In Bangladesh we are working with the BRAC WASH programme to complete the sanitation chain by making excreta from millions of pit latrines safe and economically productive.

IRC is leading the way in finding long term solutions: with our knowledge, the tools for analysing service levels, the tools for monitoring, tools for looking into the costs of providing sustainable sanitation services over time.

Read more about IRC’s work on sanitation at the links below.