Attitudes to traditional and alternative sustainable sanitary systems

The sanitary system is the most important supply system in a society. A cen tral problem today is the provision of a future urban system which meets th e requirements clearly borne out in environmental documents and action plan s at local and global levels. The conventional water and wastewater systems have been questioned whether they can be considered as sustainable or not. Other small, decentralized systems have been implemented and a short descr iption of different systems is shown. The attitudes, at different administr ative levels in the society, to traditional and alternative sanitary system s are discussed. The general conclusion is that there is a strong driving f orce and an interest in changing the systems. However, the evaluation of th e systems implemented so far shows that it is important to have time for ca reful and thorough investigations of new but also of existing systems in th e light of the criteria for sustainability. (C) 1999 IAWQ Published by Else vier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.