Word is out, but not yet in print or e-print, that the much acclaimed Erdos Eco-Town project in China (see blog of 18 April 2008), supported by SIDA, the Stockholm Environment Institute and its EcoSanRes project, has been closed down by the Chinese as it was just too complicated and the householders, especially the women, didn’t like it at all. No surprise here then – after all, there’s water and sawdust going into each house, and dehydrated faeces, urine and greywater all coming out in separate streams. See the EcoSan photos on Flickr if you need convincing.
“Much acclaimed”? Well, it has been – see:
Sweden-China Erdos Eco-Town Project (EcoSanRes Factsheet #11, 2008)
Introduction to the China-Sweden Erdos Eco-Town Project (GTZ, 2006)
I think the world, especially the EcoSan world, deserves a full explanation, so over to you guys at SEI (and we’d like to know the costs please).
About Me
- Duncan Mara
- University of Leeds, United Kingdom
- I'm an emeritus professor of civil engineering at the University of Leeds in England. I've been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse. I was a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1970-73 and then a senior lecturer at the University of Dundee, Scotland, 1974-79 before moving to Leeds in late 1979. I was a visiting professor of sanitary engineering at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba in Campina Grande, northeast Brazil, during 1976-95, and since 1996 I have been a visiting professor of environmental engineering at the Instituto Cinara, Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia.