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Open since 2015, the operation is India’s first city-wide treatment plant for fecal sludge, which is the term for human waste that goes into on-site toilets or sanitation systems instead of sewers. At a capital cost of just under $94,000 (6 million INR), the facility and its trucks are pioneering a cheaper alternative to sewer systems for cash-strapped Indian cities and towns, which dump more than 70 percent of urban sewage untreated into India’s streets, waterways and countryside.

The idea is catching on. More than a dozen Indian cities and towns, including three in 2018 so far, have commissioned similar projects by the CDD Society, a non-profit that built the Devanahalli plant and focuses on decentralized wastewater treatment.

But India is not the only place where the approach is relevant. Concerns about water scarcity, sustainability and cost make decentralized treatment of human waste, which doesn’t need to eschew pipes or flush toilets, relevant worldwide. In fact, building more and smaller plants that treat waste more efficiently and cheaply than America’s traditional, energy-hungry mega-plants might just be the solution to sewage problems in the U.S. where officials are collectively facing a $1 trillion bill to upgrade aging water and wastewater treatment systems.

“It doesn’t really matter where you are on the planet right now — sanitation is a problem,” says Kim Nace, co-founder of the Rich Earth Institute in Vermont, which researches and promotes ways to turn human urine into fertilizer. “… What they’re trying to do with this facility in India and other projects like it is to manage waste in a new, different way. And I think we need to try it here too.” 

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