Climate change represents one of the world’s most pressing and urgent challenges. Sanitation is a significant contributor, producing roughly 2–6% of global man-made methane. As urban populations grow, the use of rudimentary sanitation systems such as pit latrines, septic tanks, and waste settling ponds will increase sanitation-related emissions. These impacts highlight the urgent need for climate positive approaches to the sanitation crisis such as container-based systems. Moreover, the tool provides an innovative opportunity to support funders, planners, companies, implementers and policy makers to shift towards more climate-positive solutions and support the realisation of global climate change targets.

The International Water Association (IWA) and the Toilet Board Coalition (TBC) have developed this white paper as a call to action for sanitation and water operators to embrace opportunities for their products and services to feed into a new digital public health ecosystem.