Every year on November 19 we excitedly celebrate World Toilet Day – a day to acknowledge the life-saving power of the toilet and appreciate the toilets in our lives. Believe it or not, lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection. Today, one in four people don’t have a toilet. This means people must relieve themselves in open streets, fields, or dangerous back alleys. In India alone, the number of people who practice defecation is double the population of the U.S.
Celebrate your can, because you can! The purpose of World Toilet Day is to raise a stink about this lack of sanitation that causes not only embarrassment, concerns for safety, and lack of dignity, but preventable disease, illness, and all too often, death.
Not long ago, New York, London and Paris were centers of infectious disease, facing the same water problems that cities like Mumbair, Lagos, and Rio de Janeiro face today. Life expectancy was low and child death rates were as high then as they are now in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. It was sweeping reforms in water and sanitation that enabled human progress to leap forward.
What Can You Do?
Help us spread the word that there’s good news. We’re not waiting on technology or a magic cure – we already know how to build sanitary latrines. The solutions are simple and cost-effective. On average, every US dollar invested in water and sanitation provides an economic return of eight US dollars. For only $30, Water.org can bring someone access to a toilet for the rest of their life.
- SIGN this petition – demand action from global leaders to urgently address the sanitation crisis.
- Take Action (Donate your favorite social media space or status for World Toilet Day or Host an Event)
- Give Someone a Toilet for Life
- Learn More
Social Media
You’re on Facebook and Twitter, and like World Toilet Day too? Show your support and help us spread the word about this important day by donating your background, avator or status to the cause. Fan our Facebook page, follow us or some of our partners on Twitter. Here are some of the details.
Fan or Follow Us
Click to fan or friend us
Link to this page
Or better yet, go ahead and post a link to this page now on Facebook or your Twitter feed! You friends and followers will love you for it.
Follow Partners and Hash-tags on Twitter
- Follow @EndWaterPoverty
- Follow @WorldToiletDay
- Track #bigsquat Hash-tag
- Track #19Nov Hash-tag
User Icon / Avatar
Whether you’re talking on instant messenger, on a forum, or on Twitter, your user icon can say a lot about you. Change your avatar to one of these images to show your support of water.org.
Background
Transform the background of any of your websites to support the women’s water crisis. It works great on YouTube, Twitter, MySpace or anywhere else you can change the background image! You could even use it as your desktop’s background.
Host an Event
Several people are rallying in different places across the U.S. to host their own World Toilet Day event, concert, art show – you name it. Get creative! *Be sure to take pictures and video to upload to our Water.org Facebook Page so you can share it with us and inspire others.
Toilet Facts
- One-third of all Americans flush the toilet while they are still sitting on it.
- An average person visits the toilet 2,500 times a year, about 6-8 times a day. This adds up to three years of your life.
- 40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.
- The first toilet ever seen on television was on “Leave It To Beaver.”
- Car steering wheels carry more than twice as many germs as a toilet seat
- Urine on the toilet seat – although disgusting, it is a nearly sterile liquid.
- In Florida, a 7th grade student recently won a school science fair by proving there was more bacteria in ice machines at fast-food restaurants than in toilet bowl water in the United States.
- Contrary to popular lore, Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the toilet. Seated toilets with drainage systems date back to 2500 B.C. The flush toilet was invented in 1596 by John Harrington.
Learn More
- Discover your ecological footprint. Take this quiz!
- Learn 100 Ways to Conserve Water
- Find new ways to conserve water
- Four Ways a Toilet Can Change a Girl’s Life
- Love Connects the Taj Mahal and a Toilet
- See pictures of Toilets Around the World from Water.org
Sanitation History
“For most of human history life has conformed to Thomas Hobbes’ description as “nasty, brutish, and short.” Life expectancy at birth for our hunter-gatherer ancestors was about 25 years, and in Europe of the 1820s it was still only 40 years. From the late 19th century this picture started to change dramatically for the fortunate share of humanity living in today’s rich countries. New medicines, improved nutrition, better housing and increased income all contributed. But one of the most powerful forces for change was the separation of water from human excreta.
When it comes to water and sanitation, countries tend to have short memories. Today, people in the cities of Europe and the United States live free from fear of waterborne infectious diseases. At the turn of the 20th century the picture was very different. The vast expansion of wealth that followed industrialization increased incomes, but improvements in more fundamental indicators such a life expectancy, child survival and public health lagged far behind. The reason: cities exposed people to greater opportunities to amass wealth but also to water contaminated with human waste. The mundane reality of un-clean water severed the link between economic growth and human development. It was not until a revolution in water and sanitation restored that link that wealth generation and human welfare started to move in tandem.” (p. 28, 2006 United Nations Human Development Report)
**Thanks to Ariel Wilchek at isitcandor.com for donating her time and talents to create our 2009 World Toilet Day theme.**
