This session highlights approaches and business models to initiate and sustain sanitation and septage management projects. It also features a discussion on enabling conditions to ensure quality and sustainable service delivery.

There is unprecedented transformation on the waste market as it grows rapidly in emerging countries. The key is to apply specific solutions that will shift focus on treatment rather than sophisticated collection systems.

As the Green Lung of Metro Manila, Quezon City in the Philippines has the most number of enacted environmental ordinances. Along with an environmentally compliant solid waste disposal system, it has attained efficiency in garbage collection and diverted a major percent of waste through reduction initiatives and environmental enforcement.

Driven by the concepts of regulation and sustainability, technological innovations in sanitation led by the developed countries are seen as beneficial to the developing world. These innovative and efficient technologies have given developing countries the opportunity to create new systems.

Paradigm shifts in wastewater is needed to ensure sustainability of the environment, economy, and society. With the potential benefits of lower maintenance, conversion of wastewater into energy, and the prospect of nutrient recovery, the adoption of decentralized systems is a proposed measure.