Saneamento básico em comunidade peri-urbana no Ceará: perspectiva para o ecossaneamento e sanitários separadores

Abstract

The urine-diverting toilets are little known and widespread in Brazil. Despite the existence of successful projects in countries such as Europe and Central America, the transfer and its implementation are still being a challenge. This paper presents the results of a survey that aimed to perform a socioeconomic and environmental pre-diagnosis, as well as evaluating the acceptance of urine-diverting toilets, in a peri-urban town in the state of Ceará. The survey, conducted at Vila Tomé community, located in Aquiraz, consisted basically of three phases: (1) socioeconomicenvironmental pre-diagnosis and water quality characterization, (2) participatory workshops in health education, and (3) questionnaires to assess the acceptance of urine-diverting toilets. The results revealed that the storage rainwater in cisterns from Vila Tomé presented microbiological contamination, requiring disinfection before consumption, or a better handling of the first millimeters rainwater, which must be less dependent on the users. The results revealed that women showed to be more receptive to the urine-diverting toilets, while men were more favorable to the conventional flushing toilets (p<0.05). Although 90% of the interviewers showed good acceptance to the eco sanitation concept, an apparent strong community disunion was problematic to the project dissemination, resulting in a huge abandonment of the meetings as well as to accept the proposed technology. Therefore, it was concluded that probably such a rejection for new technologies was due to the lack of a multidisciplinary team capable of identifying and considering in the project the sociocultural characteristics of the community.