How we think and talk about sanitation services has changed. The very notion of a sanitation service has been transformed from one focused on technology to one focused on the sustainability of the wider sanitation system. This paper explores the transformation from technology to system by drawing from a review of more than 200 pieces of literature published between 1970 and 2015. Seven prevalent perspectives on sanitation service provision are introduced: sanitation services as a basic human need; increasing service coverage through appropriate technology; the emergence of community-participation and community-management; an interest in private-sector participation; the sanitation crisis being viewed as a crisis of governance; sanitation considered inherently political and the current focus on sustainable sanitation systems. These seven perspectives form a useful conceptual frame, which may guide the thinking of sanitation practitioners, policy-makers and academics as they begin to consider how to meet the water and sanitation Sustainable Development Goal by 2030. In this paper, four examples of how the conceptual frame might be used to support thinking are provided.

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Urban sources account for significant quantities of important diffuse pollutants, and urban watercourses are typically badly polluted. As well as toxic metals, hydrocarbons including PAHs, and suspended matter, priority urban pollutants include faecal pathogens and nutrients. Can urban watercourses be restored by sufficient reductions in pollution loads? Case studies in the UK and Sweden provide insights and some grounds for optimism. A major trans-Atlantic review of the performance of best management practices (BMPs) is informing BMP planning. New approaches such as the maximisation of self-purification capacity in the receiving waters may also need to be developed, alongside BMPs at source. Other initiatives in Europe, USA and China, including collaborative projects, are trying to address the intractable issues such as persistent pollutants from transport and urban infrastructure. The challenge is daunting, but there are clear ways forward and future research needs are evident.

Textiles are increasingly complex materials used in a growing number of applications, e.g. in architecture. The textile industry must therefore engage with other professions when developing both textiles and products of which textiles are a part. In this article, we argue that tools taken from the field of participatory design represent a potential for staging such co-design situations and report on our experience from a co-design process where architects, engineers and textile experts engaged in designing future textile solutions for Danish hospital environments. During this process we used what we call tangible working materials to stage the collaboration between the stakeholders engaged as codesigners. Our experience using the tangible working materials showed us that they can be divided into three types, with different attributes and roles in the design process: real, mediating and representative materials.

Participatory design (PD) methods are currently of little use in the textile industry, even though the need for multiple stakeholder involvement in the industry is growing. In this paper, we argue that PD represents a potential for innovation in the textile industry, due to PD's collaborative nature facilitating dialogue between different stakeholders and its ability to move stakeholder participation to the early stages of the design process. We have explored PD tools in a design process engaging architects and textile designers in designing textile products for Danish hospitals. From this we have realized a potential in dividing the materials into three types with different attributes, which should consequently be staged differently in a PD process. We have thereby seen that exploring PD in a textile design process improves the understanding of the role of tangible working materials in PD processes. We believe that the application of PD to the textile industry will enrich the theoretical foundations of PD in general.