Safe Sanitation Services (SASS)

The Safe Sanitation Services methodology is designed to facilitate climate finance for activities improving sanitation conditions, a foundational element of human health, safety, and dignity.  

The methodology quantifies greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions achieved by safely managing sanitation waste. By doing so, it avoids the methane (CH4) emissions that would have occurred during the anaerobic decomposition of human waste in traditional, infrequently emptied pit latrines, septic tanks, and unmanaged environments. The methodology integrates a suppressed demand framework. This framework recognises that populations currently practicing open defecation or relying on unimproved sanitation are constrained simply by a lack of basic infrastructure. 

• Baseline Setting: A simplified approach using the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines to calculate methane conversion factors (MCF), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and maximum methane producing capacities (B0). 
• Ambition: Applies a Downward Adjustment Factor (DAF) to align the crediting baseline with the host country’s net zero trajectory. 
• Leakage: Accounting of emissions from manufacturing of sanitation hardware, such as container receptacles, vacuum trucks, and centralised treatment infrastructure. 
• Monitoring and Integrity: 100% Unique Identification (UID) tracking of containment units, plus digital or logbook tracking of the full service-chain (Containment, Emptying, Transport, Treatment, and Safe Disposal) to prevent double-counting and ensure environmental integrity. 

• Shared Facilities: Recognising the reality that having a sanitiation facility in each household might be unrealistic, feedback is sought on how and when facilities may be shared between several households, and to what extent. 
• Co-treatment: Since mixing organic waste can improve the treatment of sanitation waste, or may be practical for operational, logistical and financial reasons, feedback is sought on whether and how the co-treatment of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) should be allowed, and whether the resulting emission reductions treatment can be considered under the methodology.