Co-composting of faecal sludge with solid waste to improve FSM practice in Sakhipur municipality

Sakhipur municipality with 32,000 inhabitants mostly comprise of onsite septic tank and pit toilet of different types. When the pit or septic tank is full, the usual practice is to engage professional sweepers are employed to manually empty them and deposit the wastes in mostly the nearby water bodies. A co-compost plant was designed by the Sakhipur municipality and partners and it’s been in operation since 2016 to tackle faecal sludge generated from pit toilets and septic tanks, and solid waste from households exploring sanitation service chain. This study provides a description of an innovative co-composting system which improves current FSM practice in municipality regime. The generated lessons against tackling the operational challenges of sanitation service chain will provide good learnings for replicating similar practice in other municipalities.