Word: toilets
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Save the poop jokes, because Rose George has heard them all. When the London-based journalist decided to write a book on human waste, toilets and the world sanitation crisis, she knew that she'd be the butt of a few jokes around the pub. What she didn't realize - at least not fully - was just how important her subject was. George's new book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters delves into the taboo subject of bowel evacuation, with tact, sensitivity - and the right amount of style. Reporting on the sewers...
...Toilets are a privilege that nearly half the world lacks. At least 2.6 billion people around the planet have no access to a toilet - and that doesn't just mean that they don't have a nice, heated indoor bathroom. It means they have nothing - not a public toilet, not an outhouse, not even a bucket. They defecate in public, contaminating food and drinking water, and the disease toll due to unsanitized human waste is staggering. George notes that 80% of the world's illnesses are caused by fecal matter: A single gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses...
...them - the practical world leader of sanitation advocacy - is Jack Sim, the irrepressible founder of the World Toilet Organization, otherwise known as the other WTO. Sim, a retired Singaporean entrepreneur, built the WTO from a group of one - himself - to a sprawling network of 151 organizations in 53 countries. Among his innovations is World Toilet Day, this Nov. 19, which is meant to publicize the plight of billions of people who go without toilets and fight the taboo that nearly all cultures have about business in the bathroom. That quiet embarrassment - similar to the hush around sexual practices that once...
...because I couldn't afford to. I didn't really have it for very long, because I made it real fast when CNN turned the corner, and that's when I gave so much away. Then right after that we did the AOL merger and it went down the toilet...
...many people, this is just hot air. "We have the luxury of flushing the toilet and just seeing it disappear," says George. The industry is stalled not only by that convenience, but by taboo. "People are uncomfortable talking about their own waste." It may have been quite some time since relating the adventures of your most recent bowel movement has constituted acceptable fodder for conversation, but nevertheless, says George, our 'bodily products' have to come back into the conversation somehow, if we are ever going to flush away the flush...