Executive Summary : | The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is a significant sanitation initiative launched by the Indian government in 2014 to provide toilets to all citizens. The mission has resulted in the construction of 100 million toilets in 0.6 million villages and 6.3 million cities. However, the success of SBM depends on ensuring safe containment, emptying, transport, treatment, and reuse of faecal waste. Poor sanitation leads to public health issues, environmental degradation, compromised human dignity, and burden on health infrastructures. Poor sanitation also contributes to the consumption of contaminated water, direct exposure to human excreta, and contaminated food and soil, leading to diarrhea, cholera, and intestinal worms. Without faecal sludge treatment plants (FSTPs), sludge collected from septic tanks and pit latrines is often discharged untreated into open drains, irrigation fields, open lands, or surface waters. To achieve the sanitation goals of UN and India (SBM), there is an urgent need to develop and test nature-based faecal sludge disposal and treatment facilities. The choice of treatment technology should be guided by cost, use of manpower, potential for reuse, and fostering a circular economy. The proposed study aims to develop, demonstrate, and test hybrid constructed wetlands technology for faecal sludge treatment and scale up the model to achieve the Swachh Bharat Mission goals. The study will involve construction of field-scale CW, testing of FS quality at inlet and outlet, and investigating the role of surface vegetation and suitable vegetation in the region. |