Toilets Coming Out Of Water Closet

John Elkington

October 8, 2010

World Toilet Day – which this year falls on 19 November – has been created by WTO (the World Toilet Organization), one of our favourite social enterprises, as an annual celebration of toilets and sanitation and their vital contribution to public health, personal dignity and environmental sustainability. The organization was founded – and is run – by one of the Volans team’s favourite social entrepreneurs, Jack Sim.

Due to recent progress in access to water globally, WTO argues, there is “a common misconception that the goal of reducing water-borne illness is on track. However, while these diarrheal diseases are described as water-related, but they are more accurately explained as fecal-related, since the pathogens that produce these diseases derive from fecal matter. Use of toilets is the first step to preventing diarrheal disease – reducing such death by at least 30%.

While the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to give more people access to clean water is on track to be accomplished before 2015, at the current rate of progress, the goal of cutting the lack of access to sanitation in half will not be met globally until 2049.”

Not only is this unacceptable in its own right, WTO insists, but it hinders any progress which has been made in other sectors of the MDGs, especially infant mortality, maternal health, universal primary education and combating HIV/AIDS and malaria.

By raising public awareness to the essential role that toilets play in health and human development, WTO aims to “elevate the issue of sanitation to the importance it deserves. Our goal is to bring the topic of toilets ‘out of the water closet’ and to a place where sanitation is a top priority for investment from governments, development and funding institutions and individuals. We need to put sanitation first in the minds of people everywhere so that it is no longer the forgotten MDG. We urge the world to recognize that sanitation is a cornerstone of development, so that starting this year, homes, schools, places of worship and communities are never built without toilets.”

For more on World Toilet Day 2010, see here.