Today, in case you didn't already mark your calendar, is World Toilet Day. Yes, it's time to take a moment to ponder toilets and celebrate sanitary conditions. Happily, the World Toilet people have created an application that makes this easy.
Since this is the first year I'm recognizing World Toilet Day, here's what it's all about: unsanitary conditions kill people. The World Toilet Organization is a nonprofit that aims to raise awareness around the problem, which is particularly bad in developing areas. They point out that 5,000 children die daily due to diarrheal diseases. It's hard to ignore the problem when the organization's awareness campaign encourages concerned folks to gather in public today and squat (clothes on).
The most fascinating part of this, for me at least, is the introduction of an application called Flush Tracker. Hat tip to GOOD Magazine's Andrew Price for highlighting it. Currently the application is limited to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland and South Africa so in the United States we're out of luck for now. For the countries where it does work, however, just enter the postal code and the time the flush took place. The application takes data from the local water board and calculates the trip to the closest sewage treatment plant. The app will send you two email updates showing the flush's progress.
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Some of these flushes, based on recently tracked ones actively moving along a Google map on the site, go pretty far. One unintended consequence of the tracker is that it illustrates just how much water, money and energy is involved in dealing with human waste. Toilets are sanitary, but are they the answer to this massive problem? I'd argue that they're not.
Two years ago, Michigan Technology University researchers found that latrines are better than flushing toilets for keeping conditions sanitary in developing areas. And long before the massive earthquake hit Haiti, I learned about an aid group started by Americans called SOIL that was installing dry composting toilets and turning waste into "humanure" fertilizer.
Since the earthquake, SOIL started working with OXFAM on a pilot project to install ecological sanitation facilities in an emergency setting. By June, the organization had installed dozens of urine diversion and composting toilets in Port-au-Prince. In light of the horrible cholera outbreak ravaging the country, I'd say that having greener and functional sanitation is truly something to celebrate.
Image: A screenshot from Flush Tracker sheds light on a hidden process. Credit: World Toilet Organization.
Tags: Apps, DoGooding, Green Tech, Health, Waste and Recycling
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