World Toilet Day

What the day is

World Toilet Day is observed on November 19. It became an official United Nations day in 2013, and it addresses sanitation: access to toilets, safe management of waste, and the consequences of going without.

The slightly comic name is deliberate. Sanitation suffers from a discussion problem, and organizers have judged that a name people will repeat is worth more than a dignified one nobody mentions.

Origin and background

The scale is substantial. Billions of people lack safely managed sanitation, and hundreds of millions still practice open defecation. The consequences are measurable: contaminated water spreads diarrheal disease, cholera, typhoid and intestinal parasites, and diarrheal disease remains among the leading killers of children under five worldwide. Repeated infection also causes stunting, because a child fighting constant gut infection cannot absorb nutrition properly.

The economics are unusually clear for a development problem. Investment in sanitation returns several times its cost through avoided healthcare spending and recovered productivity, with United Nations estimates commonly cited in the region of a severalfold return per dollar.

There is a specific and underdiscussed dimension for women and girls. Lack of private, safe facilities exposes them to harassment and assault, and inadequate provision at schools is a documented factor in girls missing school during menstruation.

Historically, the sanitary reforms of nineteenth-century cities, sewers and clean water supply, did more to extend life expectancy in industrialized countries than most medical advances of the same period.

How to take part

• Donate to an organization working on water and sanitation, which is among the better-evidenced categories of aid spending.
• Learn where your own waste goes. Most people have no idea.
• Stop flushing wipes, including those labelled flushable. They cause the blockages that overwhelm systems.
• Support local infrastructure spending, which is unglamorous and consequential.
• Read about the Great Stink of 1858 and what it forced London to build.