Addressing Sustainability of Sanitation Systems: Can it be Standardized?

2. Goal Of The Paper

The paper contributes to the persistent discussion of how much ethical, social, economic, environmental and organizational issues can be addressed in a technical standard. This paper asks this question in the context of sustainable sanitation.

First, in order to identify possible barriers towards addressing sustainability in a technical standard, the paper summarizes the approach taken to address sustainability issues in the new technical standard ISO/DIS 30500. It should be noted that this draft standard has been designed as a product standard for industry. It acknowledged the well-established importance of sustainability aspects for sanitation and developed general guidance and recommendations for sustainability aspects such as cultural requirements, operation and maintenance, or affordability by the intended users. However, it did not go into context specific sustainability details, which might be considered at the implementation level of a sanitation project.