Urban sanitation manages factors in urban environments that can contribute to health problems, including human waste, water supplies, and garbage. Sewers, public toilets, and waste collection services are key aspects of urban sanitation. Good sanitation provides safe drinking water and reduces pressure on the environment through recycling and composting.
Urban sanitation is a form of sanitation that focuses on maintaining hygienic conditions in urban environments. Many people think specifically of the collection, treatment and disposal of human waste when they hear the words ‘urban sanitation’, but sanitation in urban environments is a much more complex system. Sanitation is a particularly pressing issue in slums, where crowded conditions and poor sanitation contribute to frequent disease outbreaks that threaten slum dwellers as well as expose other city residents to health risks.
Historically, urban communities have given little thought to sanitation, which has turned into a major problem in some areas. Many urban roadsides were littered with garbage which could include dead animals along with untreated human waste. Walking on urban streets was an exercise in avoidance, as people freely threw trash and human waste onto the street without caring who passed, and disease ran rampant from waste materials on urban streets and waterways. A growing understanding of sanitation combined with social pressure from people tired of living in filth eventually led to the development or urban sanitation.
The purpose of urban sanitation is to reduce risks to human health by managing factors in the urban environment that can contribute to health problems. One of the main factors is human waste, which is generated in large volumes in urban areas. The sewers that collect this waste and convey it to central treatment plants are, therefore, a key aspect of urban sanitation. As well as facilities such as public toilets, which discourage people from using the streets as toilets, along with portable toilets for large events which are designed to provide attendees with a place to safely dispose of waste.
Urban hygiene also involves the management of water supplies. Good sanitation is concerned with providing safe drinking water to citizens. This may include sealing wells to prevent them from becoming contaminated, securing water supplies from outside the city, and developing a secure network of pipes to supply water to residents.
Sanitation has to deal with garbage as well. Most urban areas have a waste collection service, which allows citizens to dispose of their waste on a specific day for collection teams who will collect and deliver it to a treatment facility. Recycling and composting can be elements of municipal waste collection, designed to reduce pressure on the environment and provide additional revenue for the waste collection agency, which keeps costs low for consumers.
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