We Can't Wait: Day of the Toilet

Today is (just) World Toilet Day. It's coincidence with International Men's Day has of course led to some satire about a combined symbol being an upright toilet seat, but Toilet Day has some very serious issues to raise.

2.5 billion people - over a third of the humans on our planet - do not have access to adequate sanitation and 1 billion have no access at all to toilets, instead having to relieve themselves in the open with all the abundance of bad consequences for their own and others' health. This is compounded by the fact that many people facing such circumstances live in cramped conditions alongside tens or even hundreds of thousands of others in shanty towns and refugee camps. With water shortages increasing across the world owing to a combination of overuse and global warming, the situation is likely to get much worse without rapid action - this on the same day as it was revealed that superbugs resistant to the most powerful "last ditch" antibiotics have been identified in China.

Growing stress on water supplies

In the West, we take being able to use Thomas Crapper's invention for granted, complaining when it gets blocked or if the water runs out on a crowded over-filled outdated commuter train. Yet for so many of our fellow humans, it is a constant problem hour after hour, day after day.

Learn more about the purpose of World Toilet Day on the website here and in the videos below.