There is a growing recognition that many of the things we commonly discard are, simply, too good to waste. This is particularly true in the setting of poor rural villages facing water scarcity and low crop productivity and energy access – and where these waste streams actually pose a risk to health and ecosystem services.

Clean and Green is the first rural sanitation implementation framework that explicitly addresses efficient local resource management, including waste reuse, in parallel with sanitation and hygiene promotion. The framework centres on certifications to reward progress along parallel Clean (risk management) and Green (resource management) tracks.

Clean and Green is being developed under the SEI Initiative on Sustainable Sanitation (SISS), with pilot projects now lined up. This discussion brief sets out the main concepts.