Reuse of night soil and organic domestic waste in agriculture is a common practice in South-east Asia. This is not the case in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Here, waste is still deposited in public space. The potential to collect, recycle and reuse biologically degradable domestic waste for reuse in agriculture has hardly been explored. Access to proper sanitation is low and sanitation programmes focus on containment and dumping and not recycling. Few peri-urban sanitation programmes use participatory approaches that are gender and poverty sensitive and create employment for women as latrine masons and in solid waste collection and recycling. Multi-disciplinary action research will compare the cost-effectiveness of existing sanitation programmes with innovative approaches that address the above mentioned problems.