What is it?
The purpose of World Toilet Day is to raise awareness for the global sanitation crisis. The UN day is helping to work towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goal 'Ensure access to water and sanitation for all by 2030'.
Why is it important?
For many people, especially in the western world, going to the toilet isn't an issue. For many there is a clean toilet within their home, allowing them to safely and cleanly go about their lives. However, for many owning a toilet in one's home is seen as a luxury, something to aspire for. With people defecating in the streets, in the open and in rivers, there is a desperate need to build more toilets. Without safe access to a toilet, or a sanitary way to go to the loo, a number of issues can arise:
- Globally 1.8 billion people drink water contaminated by faeces, which has resulted in large health implications.
- Around 80% of wastewater in the world flows straight back into the ecosystem without being treated.
- It is believed that improved sanitation facilities could reduce the number of deaths a year by 842,000.
- It is estimated that 10% of the world's population consumes food that has been irrigated by waste water - this creates significant health risks, including diarrhea which kills an estimate 280,000 a year due to poor sanitation.
By creating World Toilet Day there is a hope to raise awareness about the sanitary crisis, and getting people to start talking about poo!
This year's theme: Waste management.
Every World Toilet Day has a different theme, this year the theme is on Waste management. World Toilet Day has proposed a four-point scheme to effectively manage waste (Figure 1), which they believe will help the world meet the Sustainable Development Goals for water and sanitation:
Figure 1: The 4-step journey of safely treated poo
This year's theme, wastewater, is very important as it helps highlight the issues that many people face around the world. Billions of people are without effective sanitation systems, which can lead to a large number of issues such as child stunting. This year's World Toilet Day is hoping to improve or put in place these sanitation systems to reduce the amount of poo in the environment, making the world a safer place for all.
To find out more information about World Toilet Day: http://www.worldtoiletday.info/
Hi Louise,
ReplyDeleteYou're right that we take it far too for granted that we can use toilets in the Western World. Certainly, before I'd heard of this course, I had never heard of World Toilet Day, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. How do you think World Toilet Day could become more well known here? What kind of measures could we have in society to make us more aware of the privilege that we have and just how much water we use up by flushing the loo every single time?
Hi Mari,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. You've raised some tricky questions here, we take a lot of things for granted in the western world, meaning many don't see something so simple as a toilet to be a luxury. Over the years World Toilet Day has gained more traction and recognition, but I believe people's knowledge of the day is still very limited. Perhaps a way of recognising World Toilet Day would be to report it more in mainstream media, or potentially introduce it into schools, something similar to World Book Day, this leads to your second question. I am not sure if you did this in primary school, but in year 5 my entire year was tasked with monitoring water use in our houses for an entire week, this meant noting down every time someone had a shower, bath, boiled the kettle, washed their hands and flushed the loo. The following week we analysed the data we had collected and calculated how much water our households had used in a week, a figure many of us were astonished by. We then spent time discussing different ways we could reduce water usage, although a long time ago, if my memory serves me right I believe some of the strategies were to limit shower usage to only 5 minutes per person, to only boil the kettle if more than one person wanted a hot drink, and to reduce the number of baths taken by the entire household. The week afterwards we were then tasked with noting how much water was being used in our households, but this time we were to implement our water saving strategies. After recording our data, we then looked at how our water use had reduced, and the long-term impacts of our reduction in water usage.
This homework task at school left a lasting impression on me, and perhaps could be a useful tool for teaching about water wastage worldwide, with the hope of highlighting to western consumers how fortunate we actually are. I think this homework task could be a big step forward in involving society in thinking about its water usage, especially since my mother, father and brother were all involved in helping me do this homework.
I hope this answers your questions!
Louise
Hey Louise,
ReplyDeleteWow! That is so advanced for a primary school! That seems like such a great thing to do, since attitudes are most effectively encouraged and leave a greater impression when we're younger. But do you think that a lot of kids, after having thought about their water usage for the duration of the project, might slip back into their old habits afterwards? Maybe it'd help doing a repeated annual project?
Hi Mari,
DeleteYou're completely right, annually repeating the project would serve as constant reminder of how much we as a society overuse water. Even though the homework left an impression on me I still today unnecessarily waste water. Repeating the task annually would be a great way in highlighting the importance of World Toilet Day and other water and sanitation needs to the western world.