Promotion of safe and systematic collection of human waste could potentially provide better global health and environmental benefits, according to a new report from the United Nations University. Human waste can produce biogas that could be a potential fuel source to power 138 million households worldwide, which may prevent the destruction of trees.

The biogas from human waste across the world could gain a value of about US$ 9.5 billion in natural gas equivalent. The dried and charred faeces could also produce 2 million tonnes of charcoal-equivalent fuel, which can help prevent larger destruction of trees.

"Rather than treating our waste as a major liability, with proper controls in place we can use it in several circumstances to build innovative and sustained financing for development while protecting health and improving our environment in the process," according to the researchers from the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, or UNU-INWEH, in Canada.

Figures from the UN show that 2.4 billion people across the world lack access to improved sanitation facilities. In addition, nearly 1 billion people, with 60 percent from India, are not using toilets and tend to excrete their waste in open areas.

The researchers suggest that if the wastes of these populations could be utilised, the financial value of biogas would potentially exceed US$200 million ($277 million) every year and could even reach as high as US$376 million ($522 million). The generated energy could be equivalent to the fuel needed to power 10 to 18 million households in India.

However, “the potential energy value of human waste has been given much less attention to date," said Chris Metcalfe, UNU-INWEH senior researcher. But many places are already using human and animal waste for food production worldwide, which has guidelines to ensure its safety, he added.

The researchers are aiming to demonstrate simple, cost-effective new approach in low-resource countries to promote human waste management. A new approach would help deliver human waste benefits for the environment and to reduce sanitation problems causing one-tenth of all world illnesses, according to Zafar Adeel, director of UNU-INWEH.

The UNU-INWEH has recently established the Waste to Wealth national framework, with the Ugandan Ministry of Water and Environment, its agencies, and other NGO and academic institutions, to demonstrate modern anaerobic digestion technologies for sanitation systems. Waste to Wealth was funded by the Grand Challenges Canada.

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