In India’s schools, reports show that 22 per cent did not have appropriate toilets for girls, 58 per cent of preschools had no toilet at all, and 56 per cent of preschools had no water on the premises.

Environmental sanitation encompasses the control of environmental factors that are connected to disease transmission. Subsets of this category are solid waste management, water and wastewater treatment, industrial waste treatment and noise pollution control. According to World health organization (WHO) Environmental sanitation was defined as the control of all those factors in the physical environment which exercise a harmful effect on human being physical development, health and survival. One of the primary function of environmental sanitation is to protect public health. Kurian, Mathew; McCarney, Patricia, eds. (2010). Peri-urban Water and Sanitation Services. Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-90-481-9425-4. ISBN 978-90-481-9424-7. Archived from the original on 2022-12-11 . Retrieved 2017-09-11. The Human Right to Water and Sanitation was recognized by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2010. [16] [17] [18] It has been recognized in international law through human rights treaties, declarations and other standards. It is derived from the human right to an adequate standard of living. [19] In 2017, JMP defined a new term: “ basic sanitation service“. This is defined as the use of improved sanitation facilities that are not shared with other households. A lower level of service is now called “limited sanitation service” which refers to use of improved sanitation facilities that are shared between two or more households. Safely managed sanitation is the highest level of household sanitation envisioned by the Sustainable Development Goal Number 6. [41] It is measured under the Sustainable Development Goal 6.2, Indicator 6.2.1, as the "Proportion of population using (a) safely managed sanitation services and (b) a hand-washing facility with soap and water". [42] [9] The current value in the 2017 baseline estimate by JMP is that 4.5 billion people currently do not have safely managed sanitation. [9]

Gates Foundation (2010). "Water Sanitation Hygiene Fact Sheet 2010" (PDF). Gates Foundation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-10-21 . Retrieved 2017-11-17. Gius, Mark; Subramanian, Ramesh (2015). "The Relationship between Inadequate Sanitation Facilities and the Economic Well-Being of Women in India". Journal of Economics and Development Studies. 3 (1). doi: 10.15640/jeds.v3n1a2. ISSN 2334-2382. Reed, Brian; Bevan, Jane (2014). Managing hygiene promotion in WASH programmes. Leicestershire, UK: Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), Loughborough University. ISBN 978-1-84380-168-9. Paranipe, Nitin (19 September 2017). "The rise of the sanitation economy: how business can help solve a global crisis". Thomson Reuters Foundation News. Archived from the original on 29 December 2019 . Retrieved November 13, 2017.

The United Nations, during the Millennium Summit in New York in 2000 and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, developed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at poverty eradication and sustainable development. The specific sanitation goal for the year 2015 was to reduce by half the number of people who had no access to potable water and sanitation in the baseline year of 1990. As the JMP and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report in 2006 has shown, progress meeting the MDG sanitation target is slow, with a large gap between the target coverage and the current reality. Modified logo of International Year of Sanitation, used in the UN Drive to 2015 campaign logoWe mobilize communities, build markets for sanitation goods and services, and partner with governments to plan and finance sanitation services. Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an approach to achieve behavior change in mainly rural people by a process of “triggering”, leading to spontaneous and long-term abandonment of open defecation practices. CLTS takes an approach to rural sanitation that works without hardware subsidies and that facilitates communities to recognize the problem of open defecation and take collective action to clean up and become “open defecation free”. Another example of what is included in sanitation is found in the handbook by Sphere on "Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response" which describes minimum standards in four "key response sectors" in humanitarian response situations. One of them is "Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion" ( WASH) and it includes the following areas: Hygiene promotion, water supply, excreta management, vector control, solid waste management and WASH in disease outbreaks and healthcare settings. [12] :91 As at 2015, only one rural household out of ten were using improved household toilets while three in every ten of them practiced open defecation. We work directly with schools and health-care facilities to improve access to basic water, sanitation and handwashing facilities, and to establish protocols for preventing and controlling infections. We support menstrual health and hygiene in schools by constructing private, secure sanitation and washing facilities as well as menstrual pad disposal facilities. We also provide education and support services that help more girls better manage their menstruation cycle.

The latest innovations in the field of public health sanitation, currently in the testing phase, comprise - use of 'locally produced alcohol-based hand rub'; 'novel latrine improvement'; and 'container-based sanitation'. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health agency of the United States has recognized the stated three initiatives. For developing countries, the economic costs of inadequate sanitation is a huge concern. For example, according to a World Bank study, economic losses due to inadequate sanitation to The Indian economy are equivalent to 6.4% of its GDP. [24] Most of these are due to premature mortality, time lost in accessing, loss of productivity, additional costs for healthcare among others. [24] Inadequate sanitation also leads to loss from potential tourism revenue. [24] This study also found that impacts are disproportionately higher for the poor, women and children. Availability of toilet at home on the other hand, positively contributes to economic well-being of women as it leads to an increase in literacy and participation in labor force. [25] Types and concepts (for excreta management) [ edit ] Percentage of population served by different types of sanitation systems [26] Example of sanitation infrastructure: Shower, double-vault urine-diverting dry toilet (UDDT) and waterless urinal in Lima, Peru promoting school attendance: girls’ school attendance is particularly boosted by the provision of separate sanitary facilities;Ongoing investment in sanitation services by households, communities and governments is necessary to shift community behaviour so that ‘toilet use by all’ becomes the new norm.