I give a shit! Do you?

The WTD is a day to raise awareness of how much there still is to do to ensure that billions of people around the globe have access to good sanitation. 

However, World Toilet Day is also a day to celebrate the good work that is being done and what has been achieved already. One way to contribute with the World Toilet Day is to share your experiences from the last year.

So the question is: Since the last World Toilet Day in 2011, what experience, activity or event that you were part of, etc that signals that progress is happening stands out for you?

If you have something to share, please send up to 250 words to P.Bongartz@ids.ac.uk and, if possible, a photo (separately in a jpg file) to go along with what you have written about. 

The responses will be compiled and posted them on the website on World Toilet Day.

Deadline: Tuesday, 13th November

Check out the World Toilet Day Website

Toilet 2.0 - the next Generation

In recent years we have seen a transition from analogue radio and television to digital services.

Smarter telephone technologies including video and net based applications are complementing the traditional voice down a copper wire.

Automotive companies are starting to roll out electric vehicles to replace internal combustion engine technologies.

These processes are transitional.

Prototypes were developed.  They begin as pilot projects, to prove the concept.

This is exactly what is proposed for developing Toilet 2.0 technologies.



The rationale for source segregation is to encourage nutrient recovery and reduce to costs and environmental impacts of the tradition method of aggregating urine and feaces with vast quantities of flush water, grey water and trade waste.

We need to identify pilot projects, to demonstrate the concepts of source separation of urine and feaces.

We need to develop the supporting processes, the institutional arrangements and encourage the social acceptance of the paradigm shift.

We need to develop trade waste policies and charges that incentivate and support source segregation.

Using traditional toilet technologies, there is a peak load of nitrogen, phosphorus that coincides with a hydraulic peak load, every morning and evening.

We need business models and a business case that demonstrates the value of source segregation.  There is a potential for delaying large capital investment for infrastructure upgrades by reducing the peak loads.  There are opportunities to reduce or avoid the operational costs at sewage treatment plants by reducing the need for energy intensive, biological and chemical processes for removing nitrogen and phosphorus.

The Toilet2.0 technologies provide an opportunity to lower the costs of delivery of sewage treatment services and increase the opportunities for resources recovery, energy efficiency, water efficiency and better environmental outcomes.

If Toilet2.0 technologies can be developed and demonstrated in my community, there is a huge market potential to meet the needs of 2.6 billion people who lack access to any form of toilet.

Thank you Bob Carr

Senator Bob Carr
Australian Government
Canberra

Dear Bob,

Thank you for joining the global Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) Partnership.

Australia does not have a great record for dealing with our own poo & wee. Most of it ends up directly or indirectly in our rivers & oceans.

I trust Australians can help build supply chains for the 2.6b people around the world (1b in our region) who lack a sustainable, designated place to poo.

By participating in the SWA, perhaps Australian can learn about nutrient recovery and reuse & emerging technologies like urine separating toilets.

regards,

Rowan Barber
Engineer without a border

Walks for water and sanitation are kicking off across the globe

Press Release

For Immediate release:

Walks for water and sanitation are kicking off across the globe

Over 300,000 people across the world are expected to take action on the water and sanitation crisis from Saturday 17 March to Sunday 25 March 2012.

The Walk for water and sanitation in Brisbane will take place on the 23 March 2012 at Noon at Reddacliff Place.

People are walking in over 60 countries from Bangladesh to Benin, Nigeria to Norway and Mozambique to Malaysia. They are walking in solidarity with the millions of people – overwhelmingly women and children - who walk great distances each day to collect water for their basic needs and the billions who have no safe place to go to the toilet.

Walking around the world

Walkers will be calling on governments to put an end to the water and sanitation crisis that kills one child under five every twenty seconds, 4,000 every day. They are walking to demand that politicians take action to tackle preventable diarrhoeal diseases that are the biggest killer of children in Africa, taking more young lives than HIV/AIDs, malaria and measles combined.

Details of some of the walks include:

• In Belgium, an incredible 21,270 school children will be walking a combined total of 133,151km on World Water Day, that’s over a third of the distance from the Earth to the moon!
• The entire Cirque de Soleil cast are planning a walk through Las Vegas in their costumes.
• 30 energetic walkers in London are currently training to walk the 20 miles from one side of the city to the other.
• Over 10,000 people will walk in Nigeria whilst 40,000 are expected to walk in Madagascar, both countries directly affected directly by the water and sanitation crisis.
• In Kannungu in Uganda, walkers are meeting with the Minister of Water and Environment, and officials from the Ministry of Health to tell them it’s time for action.

At crisis point

Edith Veromaminiaina, Research Officer at WaterAid in Madagascar, described the extent of the crisis:

“70% of the Malagasy people live in rural areas, where the access to drinking water is less than 34%. In many places, children set off on their walk to collect water late at night and don’t arrive home until the next morning. They have a sleepless night and walk very far but still only draw dirty water. This is why we are taking part in The World Walks for Water and Sanitation.”

Jennifer Williams, coordinator of the World Walks for Water and Sanitation campaign added, “Unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation mean children are missing school and are dying needlessly from disease caused by contaminated water. Ending this crisis would increase school attendance, help break the poverty cycle and, most importantly, save lives.”

Demanding that world leaders take action

This year, the timing of the World Walks for Water and Sanitation is crucial. It comes almost exactly a month before leaders from across the world gather in Washington D.C. at a vital meeting on the 20^th of April to discuss what they are going to do to get taps and toilets to the world’s poorest communities.

This High-Level Meeting, organised by the Sanitation and Water for All partnership, is a huge opportunity for real change but it won’t work unless Development and Finance Ministers give it the attention it deserves.

Participants in the World Walks for Water and Sanitation event will send a clear message to politicians that they cannot ignore the water and sanitation crisis any longer. They will demand that leaders commit to attending this meeting and prepare to make strong commitments for action.

Mubu Kalaluka, Project Manager at ROCS in Zambia, insisted that water and sanitation must be a political priority. "In Zambia, the key messages for the Government will be that the status quo is not acceptable and the Government needs to do more to ensure access to water and sanitation."

Jon Lane, Executive Director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) stresses that it is important that governments understand that sanitation and water are clever investments. “Investing in sanitation, one of the most off-track Millennium Development Goals, generates a 1 to 9 return. It is difficult to imagine any business person passing on the chance to make such a profit; yet this is just what is happening today.”

/Ends

Notes for editors:

1. The World Walks for Water is organized by the following organisations:

· End Water Poverty is a global coalition of over 175 organisations campaigning to end the water and sanitation crisis.

· Freshwater Action Network (FAN) is a major network of civil society organisations implementing and influencing water and sanitation policy and practice.

· WASH Advocacy Initiative is a nonprofit advocacy effort in Washington DC entirely dedicated to helping solve the global safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) challenge.

· WASH United is a coalition of civil society organisations, United Nation agencies, governments and sport stars promoting safe drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) for all people, everywhere.

· WaterAid is an NGO dedicated to helping people escape the stranglehold of poverty and disease caused by living without safe water and sanitation.

· The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council is a global multi-stakeholder partnership organisation that works to improve the lives of poor people.

· The World Toilet Organisation communicates the need for better toilet standards in both the developed and developing economies of the world and provides a service platform for all toilet associations, related organisations and committed individuals to facilitate an exchange of ideas relating to health and cultural issues.

· The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) is a growing alliance that brings together trade unions, INGOs, the women’s and youth movements, community and faith groups and others to call for action from world leaders in the global North and South to meet their promises to end poverty and inequality.

2. The Sanitation and Water for All partnership was created in 2010 and is an alliance of national governments, donors, civil society organisations and other development partners. They are starting to work together to increase political will and improve aid-effectiveness by mobilizing and better targeting resources for water supply and sanitation.

3. The Sanitation and Water for All second High-Level Meeting on water and sanitation will be held on 20 April 2012. World leaders from the Global North and South will meet to take action on water and sanitation.

Please access http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldwalksforwater/ for photographs. Original copies available on request.

Damon and Amanpour Tackle the Global Water Crisis

Damon and Amanpour Tackle the Global Water Crisis

29 November, 2011

Christiane Amanpour took on the global water crisis Sunday, on ABC’s “This Week”. The interview starts with Amanpour sharing startling statistics such as a child dies every 20 seconds from lack of access to safe drinking water. To address this crisis, Water.org co-founders Matt Damon and Gary White are working to bring safe drinking water to people across the world.

Damon was first inspired to get more involved with water when he met a young girl in rural Zambia. On their walk to collect water, Damon inquired what the girl planned on doing when she grew up, to which she responded she would go to Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, to be a nurse. Damon realized after the interaction that the girl was only able to think about working in Lusaka due to the nearby borehole, which provided water so close to her home. This borehole allowed for the girl to attend school instead of spending her life searching for water.

As a father of four girls, Damon is particularly interested in finding a solution to the global water crisis which sentences millions of young girls around the world to be used as water infrastructure. In the interview, Damon and White explain how the water crisis can be solved in part through market-based solutions, such as water credit, a micro-financing loan system. Water.org’s water credits make it affordable for families to build toilets or connect water to their homes. The water connections bring water security to homes allowing women and girls to spend more of their time at school and at work, instead of fetching water and suffering from preventable waterborne disease.

One of Damon and White’s biggest obstacles is bringing the water crisis home to the United States. Damon often uses his celebrity status to inspire people to care about water, since most Americans cannot fathom going a day without safe drinking water. Learn more about how Damon and White are showcasing the positive impact of investing in water by viewing the full interview on “ This Week”.

Ana Kolodzinski

akolodzinski@WASHinitiative.org

703-795-1588

World Toilet Day

I wonder if you can have a bit of a think & a chat to your colleagues about how we might want to celebrate World Toilet Day in 2011.

The 19th November - is World Toilet Day: http://worldtoilet.org/wto/index.php/programmes/world-toilet-day/78-world-toilet-day-2011

http://www.wateraid.org/australia/about_us/newsroom/8015.asp

In 2008, when I was at the Department of Public Works, we teamed up with Caroma, the International Water Centre & Engineers Without Borders to run a 100 toilet Art Exhibition in the Queen Street Mall. We had Bob Mcmullan (the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance) come along and open the exhibition. Councillor David Hinchliffe submitted an entry along with local artists & artisans, PR/Marketing & engineering firms.

In 2009, we held a sit in (squat in) at King George Square, highlighting the fact that 2.6 billion people have to squat out in the open or in the streets, because they do not have access to even the most basic toilets.

in 2010, we held "a where would you hide", Art Exhibition, with the Australian Toilet Organisation & WaterAid Australia, using lifesize cardboard puppets. Unfortunately, the puppets drowned in the basement of Brisbane Square in the January flood. We also acknowledged the work of the folks in Urban Cleansing at Brisbane City Council, who clean & maintain public toilets.

Earlier this year, I extorted some money & support from Natalie Bochenski (aka Girl Clumsy) - http://www.girlclumsy.com/2011/02/rowan-doesnt-want-to-help-or-does-he.html

The objective of World Toilet Day is to celebrate our toilets & the benefits that they bring and to raise awareness of the fact that a third of the world's citizens do not have access to a toilet.

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Here is a summary of what a toilet means for a young girl (taken from: http://blockbuster.water.org/?p=466)

1) She can stay in school.
Girls in the developing world often drop out of school once they reach puberty because there are not separate sanitation facilities for boys and girls. When menstruating, there is nowhere private to tend to their needs or deal with soiled clothes. The resulting embarrassment and anxiety causes girls to give up on school.

2) She’ll have better health.
Lack of toilets or other sanitation facilities forces girls to wait until nighttime to defecate (under the cover of darkness) or to wake up very early in the morning. This not only causes extreme discomfort, but can also cause urinary tract infections and other gastro-intestinal problems.

Fecal matter is the leading cause of illness in the world. Most of these illnesses, such as diarrhea, are easily preventable with access to sanitation (toilets, or other means of waste disposal). Because no sanitation facilities are available, open defecation is a common practice in rural areas in the developing world – despite the fact that people are ashamed of being forced to use this practice and often know that it is associated with disease. While many adult women suffer chronic diarrhea and survive, hundreds of thousands of girls less than five years old die each year because of it.

3) She won’t have to worry about her safety.
With the setting sun comes the long-awaited opportunity for girls to relieve themselves – but fear is a companion to their relief. When a girl’s only option is relieve herself under the cover of darkness, in a remote field or other removed location, she is more open to attack by wild animals and poisonous insects, and more vulnerable to rape and physical and sexual assault.

4) She’ll have the dignity she deserves.
Imagine living life without sanitation: you have no privacy, no sense of security, poor health, and limited options for staying in school.

regards,

Rowan Barber - Sanitation Engineer

Urine separation toilets

One of the first principles of process engineering is segregation (or separation of waste streams). The effluent from one process can be the influent for another. In many developed societies, we aggregate our poo & our wee with vast quantities of water, transfer the slurry over vast distances, only to separate the components out again using energy intensive physical, chemical & biological processes.

Physiologically, are poo & our wee are separated. We need to design our user interfaces (toilets) with baffles or separate urinals to enable the collection of urine.

Urine can be a precursor or feedstock for many useful industrial chemicals including fertilizers, sodium hypochlorite (bleach).

Head to the Year Of Humanitarian Engineering Website & join the discussion.