World Toilet Day

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World Toilet Day logo

As World Toilet Day was on November 19 for the first time in 2001 by the World Toilet Organization declared. On July 24, 2013, the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously, at the suggestion of Singapore, declared November 19 to be the United Nations World Toilet Day in the fight for sanitary facilities. The background to this is the lack of sufficient hygienic sanitary facilities for more than 40 percent of the world's population and the resulting polluted water and waterborne diseases , which have health and socio-economic consequences. According to the United Nations (UN), more than 2.5 billion people live without adequate sanitation. The poorer rural populations and residents of slums and fast-growing urban settlements are particularly hard hit.

Function and goals

The World Toilet Organization has also held the World Toilet Summit every year since 2001 . In 2006, this major accompanying event took place on World Toilet Day in Bangkok under the motto "Happy Toilet, Healthy Life".

World Toilet Day is intended to shake up those responsible in politics and business. Above all, by eliminating taboos in order to undo mechanisms of repression in relation to the sanitary inadequacies that are widespread worldwide. National governments are required to spend at least three percent of their spending on sanitation and water supply, but also to fight corruption in the water sector. Bribery and corruption alone are disappearing, it is estimated that two billion US dollars annually in dubious money channels instead of contributing to solving the problems, for example by investing in alternative sanitary and water technology.

Criticism of conventional sanitary concepts

Conventional decentralized sewage systems such as latrines and septic tanks , on the other hand, are hardly feasible, especially with increasing settlement densities, and in some cases lead to considerable groundwater pollution. Basically, in conventional disposal systems, the nutrients contained in human excretions, which are valuable for agriculture and thus food production, are at least partially lost.

Conventional central sewage disposal methods, such as widespread in industrialized countries borne sewage with the subsequent multi-stage water treatment plants require due to the large-sized sewer buildings high investments. Due to their high water consumption, which would exacerbate the feared water crisis, and the enormous investment and operating costs, they are not available as a comprehensive solution for e.g. B. arid developing countries in question. And environmental reasons, they are coming under increasing criticism since the one hand, fertilizing with sewage sludge (in addition to the plant nutrients and heavy metals and environmental chemicals includes) to new environmental problems not all environmental chemicals leads, on the other hand, still have all pathogens in conventional (aerobic) wastewater treatment can be retained, so that the inputs from the sewage treatment plants in the river lead to further health problems or significant restrictions of use for the people living below.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ World Toilet Day. Deutsche Welthungerhilfe eV, accessed on June 22, 2017 .