Skip to main content

Published on: 07/06/2012

Before you is the first version of the Low-Cost Sanitation Package for Non-Sewered Private Toilets, SanPack for short. This collection of e-documents is the reorganized set up of papers, materials and tools that IRC and its partners have developed on non-sewered household toilets from the mid-1980s until now. The focus was, and remains, on how to give all people sustained access to improved sanitation and hygiene.  

All earlier documents are now available electronically through the IRC WASH library. They have been reorganised to reflect a service delivery approach for non-sewered sanitation. This approach covers services for all stages of the sanitation life-cycle, from preparation activities to the emptying, recycling and productive use of toilet contents.

In SanPack you can find links to selected documents from IRC and its partners:

  • articles
  • training materials
  • manuals
  • short videos

Why reorganize sanitation materials?

IRC has been working on sanitation and hygiene issues since the mid-1980s. Initially, the focus was on the technology, especially the promotion of low-cost technologies. Now, the focus is on the delivery of sustainable sanitation and hygiene services to rural and low-income urban populations.

There is, however, no need to reject all old materials and reinvent all wheels. A lot of information developed, tested and used during the last 25 years is still valuable. To make it accessible and useable with today’s improved sanitation approaches and internet-based information services, the existing material must be re-considered and what is still useful be made accessible through the internet as part of today’s models for sanitation services at scale.

What kind of services?

SanPack addresses only non-sewered private toilets. The reason is that piped sewerage with house connections and treatment cannot be applied everywhere, mainly for reasons of costs. This service is therefore not a feasible option for all. Most households in developing countries that have toilets will have a facility with one or more disposal pits or tanks from which excreta will be transported to an end station or end use in other ways than by water in pipes. The package does not include community and public toilets, e.g. in very densely settled low-income areas and in institutions such as schools. Services for these provisions are different from those for household toilets.

Sanitation services can be research, promotion/communication/marketing, production, supply, financing, training and governance. For non-sewered sanitation services are provided by many actors at different points across the sanitation life-cycle: entrepreneurs, consultants, government departments and elected bodies at different levels, mass organisations, non-governmental agencies, community and user organisations, etc.

To serve everyone, these combined services should reach and meet the needs and demands of the different members of households not served by piped sewerage: upper, middle, lower and lowest classes, rural and (peri-)urban, women and men, boys and girls, caretakers of infants and babies, elderly people, adults and children with disabilities and chronic diseases, etc.

Target groups

The target groups for SanPack are the same groups that IRC has served throughout its existence:

  • practitioners and managers of sanitation improvement programmes
  • government and NGO staff dealing with sanitation policies, strategies and services
  • researchers searching for data on results and impacts from approaches and programmes
  • trainers involved in building capacities in a life-cycle approach to non-sewered sanitation
Back to
the top