Abstract:
We deny that we shit. Vast water infrastructure is used to convey our excreta from the cities to “nature”. Our faeces are not viewed as resources, but instead seen as “waste” and nuisances of which to be disposed. Ecological sanitation (EcoSan) fundamentally questions this idea and serves to reconnect faeces with agriculture. Two forms of research have emerged to address this paradigm: hypothetical Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and surveying actual user interaction with EcoSan. However, neither approach has proliferated EcoSan across the developed world. This research is interested in “why”. Why is EcoSan not more ubiquitous in the developed world? Approaches taken are firmly entrenched in a technocratic viewpoint of infrastructure and control, whilst simultaneously denying that we shit. The contradiction that arises between attempting to disrupt sanitation from within the very paradigm being deconstructed is the focal point of this thesis. Unless we fundamentally acknowledge that our bodies are leaky, messy, and ooze from every orifice, EcoSan will always remain in the domain of the hippies.
