Nov 18 2008
Happy World Toilet Day
AS the world celebrates World Toilet Day today, sanitation experts have called for the end of the flushing dunny to save water and provide fertilizer for crops.
Leading health advocates have called for the use of “dry” toilets which separate urine from faeces and remove the need to flush.
Speaking at the recent World Toilet Summit in Macau, World Toilet Organisation founder Jack Sims said the concept of the flushing toilet was unsustainable.
Mr Sims said a culture where people flushed their loos but disregarded the thousands of litres of wasted drinking water each year was one of sanitation’s greatest challenges.
“This ‘flush and forget’ attitude creates a new problem which we have to revisit,” he said.
There have already been calls by Australian experts to reduce the amount of water wasted through toilet flushing with a proposed new toilet tax.
Toilet facts:
- The average person spends three years of their life on the “john”.
- The average person flushes a toilet about 2500 times a year, while using about eight sheets of toilet paper per day.
- An estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, particularly in rural areas of China and India.
- Lack of suitable toilets and sanitation kills approximately 1.8 million people a year, many of them children.
- According to Jack Sims, a further 500 million toilets are needed to bridge the gap in sanitation.
- The first flushing toilet was invented in 1596 by Sir John Harrington, a British noble and godson to Queen Elizabeth I. He only invented one, as he was ridiculed by his peers, but he still used it for himself.
- Most toilets flush in the key of E flat.
- On average, a person will use 22 litres of drinkable water every day flushing a toilet.
Read more here.
[From me]
I had no idea there was a “world toilet day!” What is this world coming to? Our holidays are flushing down the drain. 
Look, if the government wants to tax my income, that is one thing. But don’t tax the “reading room!”
What do you think?
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3 responses so far
I’m confused. Where would the bodily by-product go if you didn’t flush it? Are there little magic elves that will keep your toilet clean?? To me, not flushing without some sort of cleaning system only creates a problem where there wasn’t one before.
Maybe if we had better tested the low-flow toilets that need flushing at least twice or automatic toilets that flush if you open the door to go into the stall, we wouldn’t waste so much water.
I hate low-flow toilets…you don’t save anything when you have to flush three times instead of one!
World Toilet Day…Kevin, please, next time give us more time to get ready for it! I didn’t even roll my neighbor’s yard because I missed the holiday!
M. Steve Heartsill’s last blog post..Rolling, Rolling, Rolling All the Way to Jail
Now here a holiday I can get “behind”!
Rick Boyne’s last blog post..Attention Please!