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.

service

As someone who has worked in Customer Service, sometimes it is good to be able to recognise it, when others provide great service and to be gracious in allowing someone else to have the pleasure to serve.

Last night, I celebrated the day of my birth, by dining at Esquire with my beloved wife.  The menu at  Esquire is extraordinary.  We had a degustation menu.


I am convinced that one finds happiness by losing oneself in the service of others.


On this occasion, it was a bloke called Chris, serving my wife and I.  Chris must be very happy.

As someone who does not enjoy cooking, as I rule, I find eating is a chore.   I cannot do justice to try to describe the culinary wonder that were served to us.There was all sorts of gels, foams and sorbets.  There was shredded mud crab with macadamia and coffee crumbs.  We crunched on crispy slivers of crackling (made from the double chin of a fattened pig).  There were crunchy wafers of saltmarsh stuffed cows.  Wavers of honey dipped pumpkin with chocolate.


My beloved wife and I both figuratively and literally sucked the marrow out of life (and the thigh bone of a cow).


Fortunately, Chris was able to talk us through each course, telling us what we were about to eat and equipping us with appropriate utensils.  Chris spoke with passion and clearly enjoyed working at  Esquire.

Across the room sat a renown Sunday Age restaurant reviewer: Dani Valant out on the town with local foodies: Mel Kettle & Fleur Cole.


Dani was in Brisbane running thermomix: "in the mix" cooking classes.  My beloved is a Thermomix consultant in her spare time and had attended Dani's course, earlier in the day.


There were others around us taking photos of their food to post on blogs and their twitter feed.  I refrained from doing similar.  I was to engaged, watching my beloved enjoying and discussing the food, our future and our aspirations.  As parents of infants, we don't get out much.


Recently, the someone at work, gave some examples of good customer service that he experienced at the service department of Llewellyn Motors Toyota.


This led to a discussion of the levels of service.


I work for a water/sewage treatment utility.  My customers have come to expect that my company will deliver them a high quality product, available on demand & remove their poo, their wee, the water from showers, sinks, washing machines.


My 1.3 million customers use the water we supply them.  The soil it and send it back to be treated (and disposed to rivers & the bay).  The pressure is on to reduce the cost of the services that my company provides.  The cost of raw water is fixed by the Qld State Government.  The prices we can charge our customers are capped at Consumer Price Index (CPI) increases.


Meanwhile, there are a billion potential customers (globally) who do not have access to drinking water.  There are 2.6 billion people who could be (or should be) in the market for a service provider to collect and treat their poo and wee.  There are young women who cannot complete their education beyond puberty, because their schools lack the facilities to allow them to change pads.


So the challenge faced by my company and those involved in my industry around the world - is how can we reduce the cost of the delivery of water and sewage treatment services, yet maintain (or provide) an acceptable level of service.  How do we reduce the environmental impacts of providing those services? 


Water treatment and transport is energy intensive.  Sewage transport and treatment is also energy intensive.  Disposal of the effluent and residues also present challenges (and opportunities).


I see a convergence between the needs of developed and developing communities to develop new ways to provide exceptional water and sewage treatment services.


We need to reinvent the toilet!


We also need to develop the institution arrangements, service delivery, the back of house (down stream processing) systems, networks, business models, markets, supply chains etc. to support a new generation of toilet technologies.....

  

Toilet 2.0

Today I had the pleasure of talking about the exciting potential for the next generation of Toilet technologies, to my colleagues at work.  I work for a water and sewage treatment utility.


Our current Toilets are connected to a grid in a way that is analogous to a landline telephone connected to copper wires, telephone exchanges and data centres.  The toilets in my community, are dependent on a reliable water supply, sewer pumping stations and sewage treatment plants.  The floods in Brisbane in January 2011 and the subsequent earthquake in Christchurch and the Tsunami in Japan, demonstrated the vulnerability of these systems.

My ambition (which is shared by many others) is to see the development of the next generation of toilet which are "off the grid".


The imperative is providing services for 2.6 billion people in developing communities, who lack a sustainable place to poo, wee and/or change sanitary pads.


In the developed world, the cost of living pressures, the cost of water, electricity and the cost of running sewer networks and sewage treatment treatment plants are all on the radar.


The regulating authorities in the Qld State Government have capped the price one can charge for water and sewage treatment.  The price of raw water is under review.  All indications are, that Water Authorities are going to be under significant political pressure to reduce the cost of delivery of services.


Climate change, peak oil, peak phosphorus are all driving the need for change, to reduce the energy intensity of water and sewage treatment services and recover energy, nutrients and/or water from the process.


There arises a need for a next generation of toilets.  Yet the toilet is really just a user interface.  We need a whole new "back end" to the process.  


The first distinction between 1.0 series toilets and the 2.0 series is the separation of one's Number Ones from one's Number twos.

Our Number One's a choc full of nutrients: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium....


One person's urine contains enough nutrients to grow enough cereal to feed one person.


In my community, our number twos are not nearly as interesting (or valuable).  We tend to eat too much processed food.  However, the poo from a Vegetarian could be highly valuable. The dry solids can be combusted, digested or under go pyrolysis to generate electricity, heat, light, gas or compost.


The process engineering aspects of Toilet 2.0 are really very straight forward.


The complexity lies in the social engineering.  Some of the greatest resistance to change comes from within the water/sewage treatment industry.  Today I had the opportunity to make a case for change.


I was hoping someone would say: "It cannot be done!".  I was hoping someone might say: " You're crazy!"


However, the questions and discussions were actually intelligent and provocative.  There maybe some who want to work on intermediate technologies.  Perhaps there is still a need for Toilet 1.1.   


My ambitions are still quite modest.  Toilet 2.0 is not a silver bullet.  Toilet 2.0 is the next generation of toilets.  It is time to get Toilet 2.0 out of the laboratories and into your lavatories.

why are we walking for water (& sanitation)

Some friends & acquaintances are attempting to organise a Walk.

They are trying to plan a route to or from a place of political significance or media interest in Brisbane. The folks who enforce the Peaceful Assembly Act 1992 at Brisbane City Council are making this nigh impossible.

They are trying gather friends, high-profile supporters and politicians to join the walk........and they need your help.

The tentative date for the alleged Brisbane Walks For Water is Friday the 23 March, 2012 at noon (12:00 gmt +10).

They shall rendezvous at Reddacliffe Place and march around the CBD if they can get permission to do so.

They don't have public liability insurance. They have not filled out countless forms or got all the necessary approvals. They just want to organise a walk. How hard can it be?

It is a walk for water & sanitation.

Why is the world walking for water and sanitation in March 2012?

Do you even know what the hell sanitation is?

Let's start with some statistics:

• One in eight people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water.
• One in three people don’t have access to a private clean toilet.

Women and children walk on average six kilometres every day to fetch water for their basic needs. They often walk to unprotected water sources, such as rivers or muddy dugouts, and the average weight of water they carry is 20kg. ( UNDP, Human Development Report, 2006)

2.6 billion people still live without a clean and safe toilet ( UNICEF/WHO Joint Monitoring Report, 2010). Instead, they have only a roadside, bucket or plastic bag to use. This is humiliating and also often leads to water contamination and the spreading of diarrhoeal diseases such as dysentery and cholera.

Women and girls are especially affected by poor sanitation access. They risk being sexually assaulted when using latrines in remote locations or walking to fields to defecate.

4,000 children die every day from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and unsafe sanitation ( WHO, Safer Water, Better Health, 2008).

Diarrhoeal diseases are the biggest killer of young children in Africa, killing

more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

This lack of access to clean water and sanitation impacts severely on health, education and income.

It’s time for change. We are not talking about a change of Government.

The World Walks for Water and Sanitation 2012 is a global event taking place around World Water Day, from 17-25 March 2012. Thousands of people across the world will walk together to demand an end to the water and sanitation crisis. The walks will build on the success of the World’s Longest Toilet Queue in 2010 and the World Walks for Water campaign in 2011. Last year, over 350,000 people in more than 75 different countries walked together to demand that politicians keep their promises and step up their efforts to protect the right to sanitation and water for all.

Because of these global actions, governments are beginning to take notice, promises have

been made, and there has been progress both internationally and within countries. This has

encouraged hundreds of organisations and thousands of people to come together again

in 2012 and keep up the pressure!

In April 2012, world leaders will attend the second High-Level Meeting (HLM) of the Sanitation and Water for All partnership in Washington D.C. It is really important that your Development or Finance Minister attends this meeting. You can take the opportunity of your walk to invite them to attend and demand that real progress and firm actions are delivered upon.

imagine a world without toilets

Here is the scenario. It plays out like a dream sequence, not unlike the dream everyone has when one wakes up at school in one's pajamas.

Imagine oneself back at school. For some, this is a nightmare in itself....Humour me. Humour is going to be important....

One is back at school and nature calls.

Nature is pretty impatient.

Nature calling, is a euphemism for some thing we rarely discuss but let's speak plainly for a change.

One needs to do a poo. Perhaps one needs to do a wee as well. Approximately half of you also need to change a sanitary product .....and for the purposes of this dream sequence: there is no where to go.

Now, if one was the only person in the world (or the only person at one's school), this may not be such a problem.

However, what would happen in a crowded school (or a crowded planet of 7 billion people) if there was no toilets?

Where would one go?

Where would one hide?

One step outside the classroom and the smell of ammonia and/or hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg gas) wafts on the breeze.

A world without toilets, is a world full of poo and wee.

2.6 billion people do not have to imagine this world. 2.6 billion people live without access to a toilet.

These people without toilets might poo on the beaches. They might poo on the streets. They may sneak out a night to poo in the cover of darkness.

Pooing is a risky business.

Poo is a mixture of human specific pathogens, metabolic toxins in a matrix of indigestible fibre.

That stuff could kill.......or worse, maim.

Imagine slowly starving. Even if one has no lack of food: imagine everything one eats passing straight through one's body...unable to be digested.

A world without toilets, leads to suffering. People suffer. The natural environment suffers. The species that share our biome also suffer (except certain populations of bacteria and perhaps some species of flies......)

On World Toilet Day, please be grateful for your toilet. Please be grateful for your sewers, sewage treatment plants and all the people who clean, maintain and operate the systems that transport and treat one's poo and wee.

Celebrate one's toilet. Give thanks and praise to those who clean them. Think about the impacts of flush toilets. There are now many alternative technologies.

Imagine a world without toilets. Imagine a world where everyone had access to a toilet.

Talk about toilets. Break the taboos and talk about poo.

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.

poo & wee

The Bill & Melinda Gate's foundation want to re-invent the toilet.....

The statistics are un-fathomable. Every 8 seconds, a child dies from easily preventable, feacal related illnesses.

In my own community, people have become disassociated from the environmental impacts of our flush toilet. We flush & forget.

In places like Kokopo, in East New Britain, the urban population have been using pit latrines & septic tanks for over 15 years. These systems worked quite effectively for a while. However, eventually the absorption trenches start to fail.

When I say "fail"......I mean to say that untreated sewage.....poo & wee flows to the surface.

In some urban areas in India or Africa or parts of South East Asia, the residents of the city just poo & wee in the streets.

2.6 billion people do not have a sustainable, designated place to poo or wee. In many places, young women stop going to school when they start menstruation, because there is no designated place to change a sanitary pad or tampon (or facsimile).

This is what we call the global sanitation crisis. The word "sanitation" fails to convey the gravity of the situation. People are dying because they live & breathe poo. Children suffer malnutrition, not because of a lack of food but because their food passes through them.

Dysentery. Diarrhea. Vomiting. These are the symptoms of the crisis.

Water supplies become contaminated. Flies, rats & other vermin also contribute to the problem.

Washing ones hands is not always an option.

We need better language to communicate the gravity of this situation. We have to start telling it like it is. We cannot continue to use "sanitised" language.

confessions of a toilet cleaner

Up until recently, I earned a livelihood by picking up rubbish, emptying garbage bins and cleaning toilets in my city....

This is my story:

Well...
I was walking in the Mall
When I saw a cleaner, cleaning.
He was actually emptying the bins
Not on his broom a leaning.

I asked him, how he was that day
He sighed but did not slow up,
For he was on a double shift,
For his replacement had not shown up.

I thought a bit, and then I stopped
Why was a cleaner called for?
What could cleaner in high viz
Be cleaning in the Mall for?

Soon I swept up and emptied bins,
And made the bins all shiny.
My colleagues they would moan and whinge,
They sounded rather whiny.

Yet I swept up. I cleaned up fast
As fast as I could go, sir.
I cleaned the loos, I mopped up stains
But did I whine, well. No, sir.

After that two years went by.
I cleaned from two to ten
I spent mornings as a stay home dad
Unlike most other men......

Well, while I cleaned my city.
More poetry I’d write
And letters to the editor
I’d write with all my might

I learnt how best to use a mop
I drove big diesel sweepers,
I learnt to use a scrubber while
I tweeted to my tweeters

.......to be continued

international development assistance

I have been trolling through the 2011-12 budget looking for some good news for the environment.

I posted some thoughts here on the state of the environment budget.

Yesterday, I had the honour of hearing the Australian Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, bang on about the Official Development Assistance (ODA) Budget

I have a few thoughts that I would like to share with my growing readership. (I think there are nine of you now).

One of the first points that @KRuddMP made yesterday was that: "The power that lies in your hands"

Apparently NGO's lobbying the Torries on maintaining the Aid #budget. was actually successful. It is alleged that this week Tony Abbott dropped a policy statement from his Budget reply speech that linked spending on Aid with budget deficits. This followed an orchestrated campaign by international development NGOs to lobby the opposition members of Parliament.

The next piece of good news is that 82% of Australians support the Aid programme. @KRuddMP alleges that: our (Australia's) natural sense of compassion does not stop at the Continental shelf

It is a sad fact of Australian political life that @KRuddMP has to justify the education expenditure in Indonesia on the basis of self interest, just as John Howard did previously. Spending money in the right places for all the wrong reasons.....

@KRuddMP discussed #fees & #food influencing participation in schools. He did not mention the impact that #toilets (or lack there of) have on the participation rates of girls once they start to menstruate.

@KRuddMP talked briefly about maternal health for women & children without the passion of his lovely wife: Therese_Rein (who spoke recently at an International Midwifery Day event at the Bronco's Leagues Club).

It is another sad fact of Australian political life that @KRuddMP discussed the water, sanitation & hygiene (#WASH) budget, without the passion of Bob McMullan. I suspect the spending on #WASH has been cut in real terms with more money allocated but over a longer period of time. Bob McMullan, the former Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance (& former minister in previous Labor Governments) retired at the last election. Bob was not afraid to get his photo taken with a toilet. He was a great advocate for toilets. I miss him dearly.

@KRuddMP has a different agenda & a different set of priorities. Australia has ramped up it spending in Africa. The relative amounts being spent in Africa are quite small in the global economic sense & quite insignificant in terms of the problems that need to be addressed.

However, I fear that Australia's engagement in Africa comes at the expense of programmes that were running in Asia Pacific. I fear that AusAid & its partners lack the experience & expertise to be effective in the African context. I have even heard stories of Australian Aid causing more harm than good, when the only Water Resource Officer for a region, is pulled out of his community to participate in Australian sponsored training.

I fear that Australia's engagement in International Development Assistance in Africa has more to do with Australia's ambitions for representation in the United Nations, than anything else.

It is great to see Australia ramp up its funding for tackling easily preventable blindness. It is a shame to see funding for tackling easily preventable diseases through sanitation & hygiene has been cut back (in real terms) & spread a lot thinner.

It is great to hear a focus on eliminating violence against women & acknowledgement of Australia's own issues at home.

@KRuddMP wrapped up his discourse with a plug for volunteering & the new Australian Civilian Corps

In question time, @KRuddMP applauded a better relationship between AusAid & NGO's. in response to a question about exorbitant salaries @KRuddMP indicated that salaries & fees to technical specialists have been reduced from ~44% to ~22% of the AusAid budget.

Whilst I see a need for Aid (particularly following disasters & war) & International Development Assistance, I see a future for social enterprise & micro-finance to play a greater role in poverty alleviation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 2011-12 Aid Budget at a glance

Total Australian Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2011-12 is estimated at $4.8 billion, this is equivalent to 0.35 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI).

New aid funding in the 2011-12 Budget will implement the Government’s 2010 election commitments for the aid program on:

· improving access to education,

· better maternal health for women and children,

· access to water and sanitation,

· tackling avoidable blindness,

· eliminating violence against women, and

· Australian volunteers.

In 2011-12 around 89 per cent, of Australia’s aid will be delivered through AusAID, the remainder will be delivered through other Australian government agencies, such as the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

Around half of Australia’s aid in 2011-12 is expected to be provided to the Asia Pacific region. The ten countries that are expected to receive the most Australian aid in 2011-12 – Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Afghanistan, Vietnam, East Timor, Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Cambodia – are all in the Asia Pacific.

Assistance in the education, health and economic growth sectors is expected to comprise more than half of Australian aid expenditure in 2011-12.

AusAID’s humanitarian and emergency related expenditure is estimated to increase to $325.0 million in 2011–12. This will support the United Nations, Red Cross, and other international and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) to meet humanitarian needs in Asia and the Pacific, Africa and other developing regions.

(Water) boy meets girl (Clumsy)

The 22 March is World Water Day.

How shall we celebrate?

It strikes me that this blog post is a cry for help. Professional help.

Over the years, I have done some very silly things...in the name of toilet advocacy with mixed success. Most of my efforts have involved attention seeking behaviour.

In 2006, I shaved my head and auctioned the space on ebay for advertising.

The ad went on display at an amateur rowing crew at a corporate rowing regatta. On this occasion I got to meet the Lord Mayor and the lovely Lord Mayoress. I am trying to recall why I was dressed as a Red Moose. Something to do with the name of the rowing crew.



The 2008 toilet team organised a 100 toilet art exhibition featuring Bob McMullen. The original idea was to decorate the old, high flush volume toilets being torn out all over the city, during an unprecedented 7 year drought.

Somehow, along the way Caroma gave us 100 brand new toilets. We recruited various artisans and designers from around Brisbane to decorated the toilets. Councilor David Hinchliffe painted a lovely willow pattern on his toilet. I remember vaguely collecting a lot of toilets on my bicycle and spending $2.5k on freight. One of us (who shall remain nameless) completely failed to organise an online auction and the toilets sat for a few months in Sof's garage.

In 2009, I celebrated World Toilet Day in solitude, fasting, praying in King George Square, whilst contemplating the climate negotiations that were happening at COP15 in Copenhagen.


























In 2010, we organised a "Where would you hide?" for World Toilet Day. Followed by a QnA forum on "sanitation", with mixed success.

More recently, I accepted @GirlClumsy's offer to pay my flood levee for me.

For the few people who may not know, GirlClumsy is a professional Journalist. Writer. Traveller. Improviser. Actor. Reviewer. Incredible klutz.

Perhaps she can provide some professionalism or some pole dancing talent.

it is high time to re-think water & sanitation in developed, Industrialised communities

The more I consider current practice in water and sanitation (particularly in my own city - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) the more ludicrous it becomes...

Most of our potable water is sourced from dams in the hinterland. There are plans to build another dam over a hundred kilometres North of Brisbane. Yet the storm water that falls on the city of Brisbane (mostly on impervious, paved surfaces is channelled to the Brisbane River, mixes with the estuarine, brackish water and flows out to sea.

A de-salination plant 100 kilometres South, draws saline water from the ocean and uses electricity to purify the sea water and pump it into the so-called "water grid".

Taking a relatively solid reside, which contains some of the most harmful bacteria known to humanity and making a 1-2% slurry, solution, pumped hundreds of kilometres to centralised sewage treatment plants is a very inefficient use of electicity and potable water.

In Brisbane, we currently purify the sewage treatment plant effluent with an energy intensive process called Continuous Mirofiltration, followed by reverse osmosis. The lunacy continues with the purified water being pumped over 70 kilometres to be used to cool the exhaust from the steam turbines of a coal fired power station.

My background is in industrial water treatment (steam generation, heat rejection, process water, corrosion mitigation, anti-scalants, emulsion breaking etc). When I apply the principles of "cleaner production" to domestic sewage treatment, the first thing that needs to be done is separation of waste streams.

In other words, no.1's need to be kept separate from no.2's.

Adding a concentrated source of Nitogen, Phosphorus and trace quantities of endrocrine disruptors to this mix is sheer stupidity, considering the difficulty ond expense of removing the N.P and endrocrine disruptors from the dilute stream.

So what is the alternative?

I understand that Urine-separating toilets have been used as an effective source control measure in many parts of Europe for years. The No.1's can be collected and used beneficially as fertiliser and are a precursor to many industrial chemicals including ammonia, pool chlorine and/or bleach.

The No.2's contain many pathogens, which can be disinfected through dessication and/or heat. Once treated, this residue is a useful soil conditioner and source of organic material. It could even be digested and the biogases could be used to generate electricity.

There is billions of dollars tied up in the infrastructure that perpetuates this system. There is inertia and resistance to change. So just because this is the way it is always been done, does not mean we have to keep doing it this way.

Subvert the dominant paradigm. Lobby your local Authorities and install a urine separation toilet.