Reducing Trash and Maximizing Reuse
Upcycling and Repurposing Materials: Turn plastic bottles into funnel spouts, old clothing into rags, and broken tools into spare parts.
View every item as a potential resource. Minimal waste generation reduces disposal burdens.
Composting Organic Matter: Vegetable peels, fruit cores, and coffee grounds turn into fertile compost with time and proper airflow.
Layer green (kitchen scraps) and brown (dried leaves, straw) materials, keep moist but not soaked, and turn occasionally to speed decomposition.
Bartering and Sharing Surpluses: If you encounter others, trade excess materials rather than discarding them.
Avoid waste by ensuring that everything useful finds a purpose—someone else might need your “trash.”
Plan for a Sanitation Service Interruption: Use a clear process
If a failure occurs, follow the utility, property manager, and health authority's instructions about toilet and drain use. Keep people away from sewage and report backups promptly. EPA advises avoiding contact with backed-up sewage and contacting the local health department or regulatory agency.
For a shared facility, arrange temporary sanitation only through appropriate providers and responsible authorities. Confirm servicing, waste removal, handwashing provision, cleaning responsibility, and accessibility before opening it. This planning guide does not provide instructions for improvised waste treatment, pits, or disposal.
Inventory Hygiene Supplies for Disruptions: Plan and prepare
List the ordinary hygiene activities each person needs to maintain and identify the supplies they already use. Include soap, oral-care items, menstrual products, continence or diapering supplies when relevant, and suitable waste containers. Ask people privately about preferences rather than buying one standard kit for everyone.
Check the water and disposal dependencies for each activity. A cupboard of supplies may not help if the available water is restricted or waste collection has stopped. Keep current local guidance accessible and follow the water advisory's instructions for washing and bathing.
Plan for a Sanitation Service Interruption: Decisions and exceptions
Prepare an access checklist for any proposed temporary arrangement. Ask who operates it, who maintains and services it, when it is open, how people reach it, and whether it meets users' accessibility and privacy needs. Confirm handwashing provision and the route for reporting a problem. These questions belong in planning discussions with responsible providers and authorities; they do not authorize volunteers to improvise a waste-disposal system. If an alternative cannot support the intended users, report the gap promptly and seek an appropriate arrangement rather than announcing that the problem has been solved.
Plan for a Sanitation Service Interruption: Reference guidance
CDC explains the importance of safely managed waste and hygiene; EPA covers septic-system failures. The contact-and-access plan here applies those principles. Resume normal use only on the responsible authority's guidance, and review gaps in communication or access after service returns.
Plan for a Sanitation Service Interruption: Check and improve
Keep the public communication concise and dated. State the affected building or area, the current use instructions from the responsible authority, the confirmed alternative, and the next update route. Make the message available to people who cannot use the building's usual online channel. A community group can help deliver that information and coordinate agreed transport or access assistance, while trained providers manage sanitation operations. After restoration, follow the operator's instructions for returning to normal use and document unresolved issues for the property manager. Review whether residents received the notice in time and whether the alternative was actually usable. Those findings can improve the next service-interruption plan without turning volunteers into unqualified sanitation operators. Keep the plan available in the languages and formats occupants use, and identify who will reach people who do not receive the ordinary building announcements.
Reduce waste without creating another exposure
Identify actual waste streams and lawful collection or disposal arrangements. Separate hazardous, sharp, medical, and ordinary household materials according to current local guidance. Reuse is useful only when material and purpose are suitable; an unknown container should not become food or drinking-water storage.
Create clear labels and a collection routine people can follow. Record responsibility for moving materials and required protective measures. Review when services change or user numbers increase. Reduce unnecessary packaging and share usable items before they become waste. Seek current public-health guidance for sanitation disruptions rather than improvising disposal methods from appearance or convenience. Keep instructions accessible to anyone temporarily covering the work.