Designing sustainable sanitation through transdisciplinary research : a pilot project of nutrient recovery and reuse

Design's contribution to the sustainable development of infrastructural systems of consumption (eg. water, sanitation, transport, agriculture) has primarily been in optimizing existing products, processes and services. Any transition towards sustainability will however need to move beyond finite solutions to complex problems and consider ambitious innovation across multiple components of the existing system, including its technologies, organizations, institutions, infrastructures and social habits of practice. This paper introduces an innovative pilot project where an alternative system of sanitation to capture, treat and reuse urine in agricultural trials is being undertaken. This transdisciplinary project situates visual communication design as a core component in the social process of transitioning to a new and unfamiliar system of sanitation. Students across two design schools are involved in designing visual prototypes to introduce closed loop cycles of nutrient recovery from sewage to the target audiences, and engagement tools for a range of critical stakeholders during the trial. Design is being employed to support the socialisation of system innovation and facilitate a potential transition to a more sustainable system of sanitation. The project will test, on a micro scale, design's capacity to contribute to system innovation and its outcomes will include new insights into the role of design in transdisciplinary research.