Take it away: the need for designing fecal sludge disposal services for single-pit latrines

The Government of Bangladesh is increasingly paying attention to safe collection and disposal of fecal sludge from pit latrines in rural areas. In this paper, we report on current sludge disposal practices from single-pit latrines, by conducting a survey of 1,091 households with pit latrines in a rural subdistrict of Bangladesh. These results indicate an urgent need to design an organized service that safely transports fecal sludge away for treatment. The National Committee for Fecal Sludge Management, constituted by the Government of Bangladesh, is using these results to design policy for sludge management.