India isn't alone. Dubai is having a massive problem with sewage and in the US there are a lot of communities that have septic tanks which, when they fail, can cause ground water pollution. Even in St. Louis, Missouri, USA we still have overflows in which the sewer system excess gets purged into streams and rivers when it becomes too much to handle for the sewer system. A lot of US cities have this problem.
And this is in 2013. We have a robot on Mars, people in space, and flags on the moon.
The problem is that our only current solution is an extremely expensive underground sewage system with thousands of miles of pipes, treatment plants, and storage containers which take a long time to build and are expensive to maintain and replace. That's not something realistic for fast growing communities or rising countries. There's really no cheaper better alternative.
Is this an industry ripe for disruption. Dare anyone challange the sewer/septic tank gods?
I don't understand why people always bring this up about Dubai. In 2010 a new treatment plant was completed that nearly doubled capacity. Dubai probably has a better sewage system than most US cities now (and the funds to expand it if needed). The controversy was that in 2009 there were lots of queues for sanitation trucks to dump their waste, so a lot of drivers just illegally dumped it. This resulted in some of the waste ending up in the sea water, so there were concerns over the health of beach goers (tourists). Where I'm from in the UK, up until around 15 years ago, raw sewage was dumped into the sea by design [0].
The controversy was that in 2009 there were lots of queues for sanitation trucks to dump their waste
The controversy was that ultramodern, brand new, skyscrapers in what was pretty much an all new from scratch city that hosted the tallest building in the world had to have sanitation trucks to haul away the waste at all. It was symbol of ultra-superficiality.
That's my fault for not keeping up with the times. Sorry I didn't know that was over and fixed. My original point still stands, when cities (even rich ones) expand very rapidly, a traditional sewer system takes too long to build to keep up with demand.
A traditional sewer system is not more complex than a traditional fresh water system or a traditional paved road system – in fact, it might well make sense to build the sewers when you pave the roads (or slightly before that…).
What it does take is some planning and some functional local authority.
No worries, but I'm surprised people always bring it up :) As I said before, it wasn't really much different where I was from in the UK 15 years ago. I expect there are other places in the west where it is still the case.
As I understand it a large amount of sewer overflow in the US comes from old combined sewers. Replacing them is already in action but it's a slow and expensive process as many of the sewers built before the 60s/70s were combined. My point is that I don't think it's fair to group the US in with Dubai and India as the US faces sewer problems of a different sort entirely. Our overflow comes from rainwater overwhelming the system and not from excessive human use.
You're 100% right. In the US, the problems are about handling the days where the top 5% of storm waterflow overwhelms the system.
Another thing to think about is that many sewer systems were built before big suburban buildouts, and typically the original urban areas are located near rivers or the ocean... so the suburban systems often connect to the older urban infrastructure.
Many of the changes in development patterns in the last 50-75 years have increased stormwater flows. Roads, shopping centers and other landscape features are either impermeable or are designed to divert water "away". And... there are fewer wetlands or other areas to absorb the water, so you're hammering these systems with massive amounts of water that were really rare 100 years ago.
"Fixing" things in the US is tough depending on the location. Many places are implementing strategies to reduce peak storm waterflow, like mandating swales or ponds for big sprawl-ly development projects and building big stormwater tanks/basins under roadways in more densely developed areas.
Are there companies working on a plug-in block (think of something in between a vending machine and shipping container in size) that could convert human excrement to bagged, saleable/usable fertiliser pellets?
Someone who knows their shit might be able to tell me what challenges prevent this from existing, but I would've thought that something that could be dumped on site and tapped into somehow could be useful.
Surely one day technology would allow for solar + reliable energy storage + large rain water storage + waste processor to mean that many people could do away with a lot of the typical grid services fixed to a house? (e.g., electricity/water/wastewater would be dealt with)
I think you're missing the point, the article is talking about simple access not sewage system reliability. They're not completely mutually exclusive, but different topics nonetheless.
I think the only way something like this can be disrupted is by a party seeing an opportunity.
I think this opportunity can be biogas digestors (either through aerobic or anaerobic processes). I think this can incentivize modernization of waste management (to maximize efficiency and profit). After building my own with a friend in college with waste from our diners (and obtaining measurable amounts of naturalgas with a rudimentary rig), i'd say this could be better than trying to convince the massess to change their behaviors overnight.
And this is in 2013. We have a robot on Mars, people in space, and flags on the moon.
The problem is that our only current solution is an extremely expensive underground sewage system with thousands of miles of pipes, treatment plants, and storage containers which take a long time to build and are expensive to maintain and replace. That's not something realistic for fast growing communities or rising countries. There's really no cheaper better alternative.
Is this an industry ripe for disruption. Dare anyone challange the sewer/septic tank gods?