Ecological sanitation a new approach to protect public health and environment in rural areas of Morocco

Abstract

Wastewater and human excreta are threatening the quality of groundwater and watercourses in rural areas of Morocco. The new sanitation approach that has advantage to solve the problems of pathogens of human waste at source and offering the possibility of reusing them after treatment is called Ecological Sanitation (EcoSan) could be an alternative solution to the conventional one. It is in this perspective that our study made an investigation on economic, ecological, sustainable sanitation techniques adapted to the Moroccan context. Indeed, a survey was carried out at Dayet Ifrah village to assess the population appreciation of the EcoSan structures installed. Survey results showed that these structures have been generally accepted by almost all users and non-users (95%). On the other hand, a pilot-scale system composed by two types of filters (vertical constructed wetland and vertical Multi-Soil-Layering) have been installed in order to treat domestic wastewater coming from a single household and their performance was evaluated. The filters showed good performance to remove organic pollution (> 84.5%) and orthophosphate (> 68%). The reduction of ammonium were 84.5% and 35.3% for vertical Multi-Soil-Layering and vertical constructed wetland, respectively. The quality of the wastewater treated was evaluated in accordance with the standard of the rejection limit value adopted by Morocco.