Today is World Toilet Day: If You Have a Privy, Celebrate!
If you live in one of the world’s developed countries, you probably take your loo for granted.
But around one-third of the world’s population has no flush toilet at all, not in their homes, maybe not even in their neighborhoods. That’s 2.6 billion people with no access to a safe sewer system, and with nowhere to dispose of human waste.
On yesterday’s episode of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, Dr. Frank Rijsberman, director of water sanitation and hygiene at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses the problem of sanitation in the world’s poorest quarters. And he’s issued a call to innovators and engineers to retool the privy…
Read the full story at Housing Revolution.
At Housing Revolution (a collaborative project with HR founder Peter Aronson), we want to be a part of these conversations—talks with innovators and creatives about how to solve big problems for people in the developing world who lack the basics: safe housing, basic sanitation, clean water. Stay tuned for the next episode of our podcast series—a talk with Elizabeth Hausler about building safer houses in earthquake-prone areas.
To learn more about the “Reinventing the Toilet Challenge,” visit the Impatient Optimists blog, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Related reading: The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, by Rose George
The Greenery 
The first time I ever heard of “the other 99%” was at the Walker Museum here in Minneapolis at an exhibit titled Design For the Other 99%. All exhibits were functional products made to improve lives in the parts of the world where resources like clean water, energy and food and shelter were iffy at best. It is amazing what is needed and what we can come up with. Happy World Toilet Day to you too!
How great it will be when someone invents the water-free toilet!