INSTITUT Veolia Environnement

  • Home
  • Report n°1: The new constraints of urban development

Report n°1: The new constraints of urban development

Sanitation

In developing suburbs, the dialectic between collective and individual, or autonomous, sanitation, depends on the size of plots and therefore housing densities, and distance from pre-existing treatment centres or a natural outlet. However, even with low densities, individual sanitation is not necessarily a technically feasible solution, while collecting wastewater and sending it to a treatment plant requires heavy investments in infrastructure.

So we can consider what new techniques can be implemented, according to housing type. One such solution could be separated sanitation, which consists of collecting liquid and solid waste separately, with different collection systems according to the type of waste, with the eventual aim of producing recyclable products in place.

This system could have some relevance for housing that is remote from collection systems and cannot accommodate individual sanitation. However, it could also be adopted for an individual apartment block, in which there would be a system of in situ recovery and treatment for some of the effluents. It could also be interesting to promote this system in metropolitan areas in developing countries, where the strong thrust of urbanisation does not allow for adequate sanitation installations. Creating systems for in situ separation and recycling could prevent the need to create very large treatment plants outside towns, thus simultaneously avoiding the construction of very extensive collection systems.

These techniques would also require new business lines to be developed, such as maintenance and upkeep of complex systems within single-family houses or apartment blocks.

 Furthermore, some techniques that require a great deal of space, such as retention basins, may contribute to producing a pleasant and enriched living environment in terms of fauna and flora, on a par with the living environment sought by those migrating to the outer peripheral areas.