The episode of Vanguard on Current about the World Toilet Crisis was one of the most relevant and informative documentaries that I have seen in a while. This is an issue I knew about, but definitely did not realize the scale. Half, yes half of the worlds population does not have a toilet to use. Just imagine, 2.6 billion people are shitting in the open.
Obviously tribal peoples do not use toilets. Anyone that knows anything about conditions in third world and developing counties would realize that bathrooms aren’t commonplace within residential areas. This is a normal expectation and it really isn’t gross to me. This is because I know that since prehistoric times man has known to have both burial and bathroom pits away from homes and sources of food and water. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, that knowledge was swept under the rug by both the individual, his community, and his government.
The first part of the show focused on India, where 55% of the population (600 million people) lives without toilets. More people in India have cell phones and TVs than toilets. Not entirely surprising. Even though the countries economy is growing fast, sanitation has not even begun to run the race, let alone catch up. It seemingly is not a priority for the Indian government.
The Yamuna River was profiled, which is the largest tributary of the Ganges. The water in the river near New Delhi is black and bubbles with methane gas. Along the banks, you cant walk more than a few feet without finding a pile of human feces swarming with flies.
New Delhi gets its water supply from this “holy” waterway. Inhabitants of the banks of the river near New Delhi have no access to tap water. Guess what that means? They use the black sewage filled river water to cook, drink, bathe, and wash their clothes. Oh yes. In the city itself there is insufficient sewage treatment. The canals along the street that raw sewage run through also hold the inlets for fresh water. So you must put your water container in sewage to get clean water. That is about as nasty as it gets. No wonder 1,000 children in this area die every day of diarrhea, a result of water borne illness.
Apparently, upriver there is a dam that keeps water from flowing to the city. Above the dam, the river is beautiful and stocked with wildlife. The only new liquid that the Yamuna River gets near New Delhi is toxic waste and sewage. When a plague hits New Delhi, don’t be surprised.
Contrast this with the town of Haryana, India where 60% of residents have a toilet. The local government gives each family a $47 grant to install a toilet. There is even a campaign called “no toilet, no bride” where mothers will not even consider a boy to marry her daughter unless there is a toilet in the house. This is giving dignity to women who and reducing disease greatly.
The next stop on this shit train was Indonesia. This was a completely different situation. Where in India, lack of money and a badly run government are the culprits in the sanitation crisis, education is the root cause in Indonesia. It isn’t that Indonesians don’t have access to clean water, they don’t seem to realize that its not good to defecate in your water supply.
The strategy of Jack Sim of the World Toilet Organization is to go from town to town educating locals about the dangers of open toileting near or in their water supply. They aim to make one town at a time open defecation free, by locally marketing toilet benefits and making the locals sign agreements. Each inhabitant that installs a toilet gets notoriety in the town, helping to spread the word. As each village does this, the idea spreads to the next. In the last year, 3% have turned to toilets. This may not seem like a lot until you consider the population.
Another interesting idea is creating many jobs for the community, fecal recycling. The contents of septic tanks go through a multi-stage transformation into fertilizer. This fertilizer is valued because it is certified organic, making produce grown with it more valuable. The next time you eat organic produce from Indonesia, consider that!
This is a serious problem that affects all of us. Even though we may live in a society where virtually everyone has a toilet, this does not mean we cannot be affected by this problem. All local environmental problems are the world’s problems due to international trade and travel. If you would like to help with this devastating health problem, you can contact the World Toilet Organization or Water.org.
Yes, let me tell you!!! Where my family is from in Bahawalpur District,Pakistan only like half of people have toilets. Pretty traumatizing reality when I visited them last year. Luckily one of my family members DID have a toilet, though it wasnt exactly as great as the ones I've been used to my whole life. Thanks for writing about this. We take our sanitation for granted and many of our fellow human is not able to afford a luxury of a toilet.
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