Abstract: This case study explores how decentralised sewage infrastructures (also referred to as Ecological Sanitation) change the city. These low and high-tech eco-innovations in several urban building communities in Germany save water by recycling and reusing waste water and were installed as a critique of resource depletion and the wastefulness of urban life. This presentation focuses on two aspects of alternative sewage systems. Firstly, it shows how the conventional way of perceiving sewage in the city is radically altered as ecological sanitation plays an important part in the everyday life of their users. Secondly, as localised eco-san technologies require a disconnection from the public sewage system, they pose important questions regarding the question of environmental justice and urban welfare.
Keywords: ecological sanitation, water and sewage, closed loops, urban infrastructure

This media entry was a contribution to the special session "Saving practices – considering degrowth in low-budget urbanity" at the 4th International Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014.