Organic Waste Recycling

2 Organic Waste Recycling: Technology and Management

1.1). Although the percentages of population served with adequate water supply
and sanitation increased during the past decade, due to rapid population and urban
growth, these percentages for the urban areas are not expected to increase much in
the next decade, while a lot of improvement is needed for the rural areas.

Table 1.1 Water supply and sanitation coverage (adapted from United Nations 2005)

Regions Percentage covered in year

1990 2002

Developing

Urban water 93 92

Rural water 59 70

Total water 71 79

Urban sanitation 68 73

Rural sanitation 16 31

Total sanitation 34 49

Global

Urban water 95 95

Rural water 63 72

Total water 77 83

Urban sanitation 79 81

Rural sanitation 25 37

Total sanitation 49 58

Sanitation conditions in both urban and rural areas need to be much improved as
large percentages of the population still and will lack these facilities (Table 1.1).
There are approximately 3.6 million deaths and 5.7 billion episodes of morbidity
per year related to poor quality of water supply and unhygienic sanitation (WHO
2000). One of the U.N. Millenium Development Goals is to have water and
sanitation for all by the year 2025, with the interim target of halving the proportion
of people living in extreme poverty or those without adequate water supply and
sanitation by 2015. To meet the 2025 target, with continued population growth
(Figure 1.1), some 2.9 billion people will need to be provided with improved water
supply and about 4.2 billion people will need improved sanitation.
Polprasert and Edwards (1981) cited several reasons for the failure to provide
sewerage to the population of the cities of the developing countries. The
construction of sewerage systems implies large civil engineering projects with high
investment costs. These projects are ill-suited to incremental implementation in
densely built-up cities and usually involve long planning periods, which can take
up to a decade to implement. In the mean time, the problem has once more
outstripped the solution.