World Toilet Day - Have you an idea?

Things worth knowing

2.5 billion people (around 38% of the world population) live without appropriate sanitary facilities. Appropriate in this sense means, that toilets are hygienically acceptable, provide a private ambience, and do not represent a charge on the ecological environment.
Often a vicious spiral obtains where poor sanitary conditions, disease, and poverty are conditionally mutual.
Per head of population in Germany, around 500 litres of urine are 'produced', 50 litres of faeces, but also around 100,000 litres of dirty water (1). The term 'dirty water' refers to normal domestic wastewater from washing machines, bathtubs, showers etc.. The most valuable content (fertiliser) comes from urine. Under conditions of 'conventional' wastewater disposal systems, this 'good' is mixed with much greater volumes of dirty water and is thus rendered unusable. The morbid substances causing disease are contained in the faeces. By mixing with dirty water, the entire volume of wastewater becomes contaminated.
The average consumption of drinking water per head of population in Germany is currently around 128 litres. Of this total, only 2 to 3 litres are consumed for drinking and cooking. The greater proportion is consumed by baths and showers (41 litres) as well as by toilet flushing (44 litres) (3).
Suitable sanitary systems can assist in alleviating this situation, by protecting drinking water resources, improving health standards, creating more dignified living conditions, providing fertilisers for agriculture, providing energy sources (biogas), and by creating jobs.
More than one third of the globally employed mineral fertilisers could be replaced by a consistent exploitation of the nutrients contained in human excretion. This would represent endless resources of fertilisers (e.g. phosphates). As with the oil resources, the exhaustion of economically mineable resources of phosphates is to be reckoned with in the coming 50 to 100 years.

(1) WHO/UNICEF, 2004

(2) Otterpohl, Hamburg-Harburg

(3) WVW Wasser- und Energieversorgung (Water- and Energy Supplies)

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