Prejudices and attitude change towards dry toilets in South Africa

Abstract

The CSIR has been investigating users' perceptions and attitudes towards urine diversion sanitation (UDS) in South Africa for the past seven years. The main findings were that people were aware of the fertiliser value of faeces but not of urine and that only some were willing to use the faeces in their gardens. In South Africa the perceptions and beliefs of the users represent a major stumbling block to the use of the products from dry toilets, a strategy needs to be developed to facilitate attitude change and a mind shift with the users, i.e. selling the concept and principles of ecological sanitation. Community participation in the implementation process of projects and the ongoing monitoring and evaluation should be a priority, considering that the dry toilets are a new system and need to be managed correctly if the goals of ecological sanitation are to be met. The problems are usually caused either by a lack of sufficient involvement of the community during the introduction and implementation phases, or because the users did not want to handle human excreta.