View Full Version : World Toilet Day
This is serious business...I s**t you not! ;)
Actually...it is.
See a lot of people squatting in the open today? Don't be offended. The so-called "big squat" was held worldwide to coincide with the 10th annual World Toilet Day, an initiative to bring awareness to the need for adequate sanitary facilities.
Every day, some 1.1 billion people go to the bathroom without any type of toilet, according to the World Health Organization. And even with a toilet, facilities are not necessarily sanitary. WaterAid America estimates that roughly 2.5 billion people – nearly 40 percent of the global population – do their business unsafely, often in public spaces.
And so it goes...:rolleyes:
Richard :munchin
World Toilet Day
CSM, 19 Nov 2010
World Toilet Day is organized by the Singapore-based World Toilet Organization, which has 235 member organizations in 58 countries "working toward eliminating the toilet taboo and delivering sustainable sanitation." Here's a list of the world's worst nations in terms of people lacking access to sanitary facilities.
10. Niger: 12 million
Four in 5 people in Niger go in the open, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). That's about 12 million people, or 79 percent of the 14.7 million population in the north-central African nation. It's a slight improvement from the 84 percent of the population who did their business in the open in 1990, according to the WHO's 2010 update on progress on improving sanitation.
9. Brazil: 13 million
About 13 million Brazilians go to the bathroom in the open, according to the WHO, although this is only about 7 percent of the nation's population of 192 million people. Over the past two decades, about 80 percent of the population saw an improvement in sanitation facilities, allowing more than 50 million people to gain access to better facilities. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, the percentage of the regional population openly defecating dropped from 17 percent in 1990 to 6 percent in 2008.
8. Nepal: 15 million
The Himalayan nation wedged between India and China has low use of sanitation facilities, with some 52 percent of the 29 million population lacking access to indoor plumbing. Still, 31 percent of the population – or 6.8 million people – have seen improved sanitation facilities over the past two decades
7. Sudan: 17 million
More than 17 million people, or 41 percent of the population, in the northern African nation of Sudan use the outdoors as their bathrooms.
6. Nigeria: 33 million
Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, also has the world's 6th highest number of citizens going to the bathroom outside. Of 151 million people living in Nigeria, 33 million do it in the open. Still, more than 12 million people there have gained access to sanitation facilities over the past two decades.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades, the number of people not using sanitary facilities fell 25 percent, according to the WHO's 2010 update.
5. Pakistan: 48 million
Of Pakistan's 177 million people, about 48 million go where they please. But Pakistan has seen incredible gains over the past two decades in increasing access to toilets and other sanitation facilities, with 47 million people no longer defecating in the open, according to the WHO's 2010 update on progress on sanitation and drinking water.
But Pakistan saw setbacks recently with the massive flooding that displaced millions of people and worsened already poor sanitation conditions, as the Monitor reported.
4. Ethiopia: 49 million
Seven in 10 people in Ethiopia's rural areas don't use indoor toilets. The landlocked nation on the Horn of Africa has seen minimal progress over the past two decades in increasing sanitation access, with only 12 percent of the population gaining improved services.
Next-door neighbor Eritrea, on the Red Sea, has one of the world's lowest rates of toilet use, with about 85 percent of the population defecating in the open
3. China: 50 million
China has 50 million citizens going in the open. That's only 4 percent of its 1.3 billion population. More than 267 million Chinese have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990, according to the WHO. As the Los Angeles Times recently found, China's surge in wealth is also causing a spike in toilet purchases. Nearly 19 million toilets are sold in China annually – double the number sold in America.
China is one of the few countries where going to the bathroom outside is much more common in cities than in the countryside. Six percent of the urban population – compared to 2 percent of the rural population – go in the open, according the WHO's 2010 update on sanitation.
2. Indonesia: 58 million
About 58 million Indonesians, 26 percent of its population, don't use toilets. Southern Asia, home to 64 percent of the world's population that still uses the bathroom in the open, has seen the practice decrease the most – from 66 percent in 1990 to 44 percent in 2008.
1. India: 638 million
The world's second-most populous nation, after China, has the world's largest number of people going outdoors. Nearly 640 million Indians, or 54 percent of the 1.1 billion population, lack access to toilets or other sanitation facilities. In some states, the Monitor reported last year, the problem was so bad that village women started a slogan: “No toilet, no bride.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2010/1119/World-Toilet-Day-Top-10-nations-lacking-toilets/Niger-12-million
dr. mabuse
11-19-2010, 17:35
Hey, our government could fix 2 problems at once.
Let's send our useless low volume flush toilets to those in need and we can replace ours with the old larger volume flush toilets that actually worked.
The uber asshats that came up with the low volume idea aren't smart enough to realize that people flush more than once as a matter of habit anyway with low volume units to get the job done, defeating the intention of saving water.
Glad I got that load off my, er, mind.
The uber asshats that came up with the low volume idea aren't smart enough to realize that people flush more than once as a matter of habit anyway with low volume units to get the job done, defeating the intention of saving water.
So one day I'm flipping through the channels and some guy gutted someone's basement to turn it into a rental for extra income. The toilet had dual flush. Yep, had two buttons at the top of the tank...1 button for numba 1 and 1 button for numba 2. :munchin
Yep, had two buttons at the top of the tank...1 button for numba 1 and 1 button for numba 2. :munchin
A friend has the 2 button loo,, big $$.
We put in the 1 gal type when we built in 97,, just changed to the new style and it flushes much better.. but we didn't go the 2 button route..
Nightfall
11-19-2010, 21:59
They left out France, well I guess just Paris anyhow... They have them, I suppose they just chose not to use them, so I guess it doesn't count.
This post reminds me, I need to go snake my toilet, AGAIN. 3 y/o kids like to flush the most random of objects. These super high tech toilets aren't fond of stuffed animals.
We've had Toto Drakes (made in Viet Nam, of course :rolleyes:) for 6 years and they are great! Zero problems. Zero double flushes.
Pat
So one day I'm flipping through the channels and some guy gutted someone's basement to turn it into a rental for extra income. The toilet had dual flush. Yep, had two buttons at the top of the tank...1 button for numba 1 and 1 button for numba 2. :munchin
Dual flush toilets are bog standard (no pun intended) round these parts, where water conservation is an issue. Makes for challenging decision-making after a few rounds in the pub... "big button or little button :confused: ?" ;)
The Reaper
11-20-2010, 08:51
We've had Toto Drakes (made in Viet Nam, of course :rolleyes:) for 6 years and they are great! Zero problems. Zero double flushes.
Pat
We have the Drakes as well. Great toilets, it really takes a lot to stop them.
TR
This thread reminds me of Cheryl Crow for some reason.
dr. mabuse
11-20-2010, 10:03
This forum is helpful in all areas of life.
Getting the straight poop on almost any issue.
Toto Drake
A contemporary, high profile design makes the Toto Drake toilet one of the most popular models in our inventory. Featuring the quiet yet powerful G-Max flushing system, the Toto Drake toilet not only infuses your bathroom with style, but also enhances it with efficient, commercial grade flushing performance.
Now that's what I'm talking about.
Bet the average Taliban fighter doesn't have access to thrones like these.:D
x SF med
11-20-2010, 10:24
Well, I'm getting flushed listening to all you guys talk sh*t... thanks Richard for starting the effluent rolling downhill, we can always count on you...
GratefulCitizen
11-20-2010, 11:53
The uber asshats that came up with the low volume idea aren't smart enough to realize that people flush more than once as a matter of habit anyway with low volume units to get the job done, defeating the intention of saving water.
I always flush twice.
It's a long way to Kalifornia.
(Gotta make sure the cargo gets there.)
A friend has the 2 button loo,, big $$.
I know, it's insane. Should have just left things alone.
Dual flush toilets are bog standard (no pun intended) round these parts, where water conservation is an issue. Makes for challenging decision-making after a few rounds in the pub... "big button or little button :confused: ?" ;)
LOL I'm sure it does make for challenging decisions. I understand water conservation but the fools here just made it worse since quite often a person may have to flush twice or in my brother's case more. :eek:
dr. mabuse
11-20-2010, 19:21
I know, it's insane. Should have just left things alone.
LOL I'm sure it does make for challenging decisions. I understand water conservation but the fools here just made it worse since quite often a person may have to flush twice or in my brother's case more. :eek:
Too much information!!!!!:eek::D
Team Sergeant
11-20-2010, 19:26
Who started this sh**?
mojaveman
11-20-2010, 20:21
I always flush twice.
It's a long way to Kalifornia.
(Gotta make sure the cargo gets there.)
In Kalifornia we usually say flush twice because it's a long way to Tijuana. :p
Too much information!!!!!:eek::D
That's what I said. What is it with men and fecal matter anyway?
Wait...don't answer! :D
incarcerated
11-21-2010, 12:27
In Kalifornia we usually say flush twice because it's a long way to Tijuana. :p
THAT IS NOT TRUE. We flush twice in Kalifornia because it is a long way to the state legislature.
;):cool::D
Well it's clear some would not read this book
http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Your-Poo-Telling-You/dp/0811857824
greenberetTFS
11-21-2010, 16:22
Well, I'm getting flushed listening to all you guys talk sh*t... thanks Richard for starting the effluent rolling downhill, we can always count on you...
Yep,leave it to Richard to lead the way.........:rolleyes:
Can't wait for Dozers inspirational comments,this is a subject he is an expert on...........;)
Big Teddy :munchin
Actually, as an old Medic, I posted it for the general knowledge of those still 'visiting' the 'garden spots' on that list...among so many others. If you're watching the Haiti situation now, this sort of lack of knowing and practicing even basic field sanitation is in integral part of what is happening there and why.
Also, as an old Medic who on a couple of occasions was tagged as being a wise a$$ (and then promptly responded with the appropriate, "Better a wise a$$ than a dumb a$$!") - I couldn't help but start some crap. :p
Here's another interesting one for the Medics out there - and if you've ever dealt with an outbreak of plague or rat-bite fever...:eek:...:
As India Rises, Its Rat Catchers Toil In Darkness
AP, 20 Nov 2010
Sabid Ali Sheikh stands on a prairie of trash — old onions, excrement, animal bones — slowly rotting its way back into an earth riddled with rat burrows. Sometimes the ground gives way under his feet.
It is after midnight, and Sheikh is after the rats. He listens for them. He tries to catch their red eyes in the sweep of his flashlight. Some rat killers say they can smell them in the dark.
Sheikh, 23, is a night rat killer, one of 44 employed by the city of Mumbai to wage its long, losing war against vermin.
Barely taller than the killing stick he uses to ply his trade, Sheikh is a clean man, dressed in elaborately embroidered jeans and a crisp shirt, who thinks himself lucky to have even this dirty work.
When he goes home, he will scrub his body down with soap.
Sheikh's father is also a rat catcher. His brothers sell vegetables from a cart and wish they could be rat catchers too.
If he ever has children, he hopes they sit in an office from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m.
But given what modern India has to offer the Sheikh family, the children may well end up standing precisely where Sheikh stands now: ankle-deep in the soft earth of a stinking dump, wearing old flip-flops.
Even as India's booming economy overflows with opportunities for the educated and well-connected, minting new millionaires by the dozen, some 800 million people toil on the dark side of the Indian dream. India's boom has lifted many people out of poverty, but it has also worsened inequality.
Put aside for a moment those stories about a great nation of engineering geniuses, billionaires and youthful promise, whose economy might one day outpace China's.
The Sheikh family does not live in that India.
Instead, they curl themselves, all 15 of them, into a 13-square-meter (140-square-foot) space with peeling paint, tattered plastic bags to hold their clothes and a fan that leaves everyone sweating.
In this India, a job with the city, even if it involves killing rats, is a thing to fight for. It means security, more precious than wealth.
The competition for rat catcher jobs in Mumbai is stiff. Only men aged 18 to 30 need apply. They must be able to lift a 50 kilogram (110 pound) sack and run a few kilometers (miles). They must demonstrate their ability to catch and kill a rat in the dark within ten minutes.
Each rat catcher must kill 30 rats a night, six nights a week. If he doesn't make the quota, he doesn't get paid.
Arun Bamne of the city's insecticide department, which oversees the rat-catching, says people badly need jobs. The last time the city recruited, he said, over 4,000 people — some with university degrees — applied for 33 rat catcher positions.
Joining the war on rats does not lead, with time and diligence, to a desk job in a fan-cooled administrative office. After half a dozen years, a man might be moved to the day shift, laying traps and setting poison bait. But there is little else to look forward to.
As a daily wage laborer, still hoping for a permanent job with the city, Sheikh says he makes 12,000 rupees ($271) a month, if he makes his quota. That's slightly less than a city bus driver, at 13,000 rupees ($293) a month, or an entry-level call center worker, 15,000 rupees ($338).
His father, Jahed Gabul Sheikh, 56, has been a rat catcher for 30 years. He makes 17,000 ($383) rupees a month.
"I am trying my best to get the city to hire my other sons," he said. "All my kids know how to catch rats very well. But the city doesn't employ them."
Sabid, his son, said his friends envy him his steady paycheck.
"A government job is a very secure job," he said. "Everyone wants to be famous and known. But this is my destiny. Everything you wish will not come true."
India seems to exist in multiple historical epochs simultaneously — nowhere more starkly than here, amid the crumbling stone walls and old goat bones of the Sathe Nagar housing colony in a northern suburb of India's financial capital, Mumbai, formerly called Bombay.
One side of the neighborhood is edged by a high shining fence beyond which lies 21st century India: the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, the country's premier nuclear research facility.
On this side of the fence, people live in a vaguely medieval place where need outweighs hope and there is still talk of the plague.
To the south is a 50-acre slaughterhouse, one of the largest in Asia. To the north is a city dump.
In other words, rat heaven.
The alleyways between buildings are frothy with trash.
Look closer.
In the faint light of the windows, the ground is alive with rats. A twitching nose peeks from a crevice in the wall. A rat tail vanishes down a hole.
Sabid Sheikh waits.
The trick is to catch the rat's eye and shine a flashlight in its face. The rodent freezes like a deer in headlights.
Thwack!
If perfectly aimed, a single blow can kill a rat. But most do not surrender meekly.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
And so it goes until the rat lies windmilling its legs and expires in a final, furious shudder.
If the rat catcher's aim or courage fails, the rat may scurry into a hole or drain pipe, forcing the man to reach in, barehanded, and extract it by the tail.
If the rodent ventures too far in, the catcher may daub the end of his killing stick with rat's blood to lure it out.
Sheikh's favorite technique is to grab the rat by the tail and twirl it above his head like a whirligig before bashing its head against a wall. If it still doesn't die, he will grind its head into the ground with his heel.
By 1:30 a.m., Sheikh and two other rat catchers have packed 94 dead and dying rats into two bloodied sacks to be carted away in a rickshaw, counted by the city, and samplings taken to be tested for bubonic plague.
They smell so bad that the rickshaw driver pulls over and vomits.
Sheikh's youngest brother, Wasim, tagged along and killed a few rats too. He is about 14, and some months back his father made a cell phone video of him in action. There is young Wasim, dragging a rat as big as his forearm from a trap and smacking it to death. His mom giggles as she watches the video.
Such is the parents' pride, they could be watching their son playing the heroic lead in a school play.
"Now he's putting his hand in the burrow," the father said, beaming. "I'm never worried about disease. I have faith in God."
He sees himself as a public servant, ridding the city of vermin for the greater good of its citizens.
Besides, he had no choice.
At age 8, he set forth on a 36-hour train ride, alone, from his village to meet his father in Mumbai. Before boarding he went to a mosque. "I prayed to God for a job in Bombay," he said. "I prayed for money. I prayed for a settled life."
For 10 years he hawked peanuts and puffed rice to crowds at a commuter train station while his father did odd jobs, baking the flat bread called roti or collecting scrap metal.
They slept on footpaths.
One day a woman came up to Jahed Sheikh and asked if he wanted to work for the city.
"She changed my life by giving me that job I desperately needed," he said. "Now it's my kids' turn."
Sometimes, drunks would tease him for having nothing in life. Once, he got beaten up. But he knows he has more than nothing: He has nine children and a daughter-in-law who makes excellent biryani. He has a stick-thin wife who sits quietly by his side.
And he has a job, which is not a gift Mumbai gives easily to men like Sheikh. All around him, as India's richest city gets richer, Sheikh and his sons remain trapped in a painfully slow cycle of aspiration. He only hopes his children get as lucky a break as he did.
"I'm happy with what I have. I came to Bombay. I had nothing. I got this job," he said. "Now I pray to God that all my sons get employed."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101120/ap_on_re_as/as_india_rat_catchers
ZonieDiver
11-21-2010, 17:20
Yep,leave it to Richard to lead the way.........:rolleyes:
Can't wait for Dozers inspirational comments,this is a subject he is an expert on...........;)
Big Teddy :munchin
No doubt! Dozer knows his sh1t !!
greenberetTFS
11-21-2010, 19:03
Speaking of rats,when I was a kid in Chicago we would go down to the city dumps with our 22's and shoot rats...... :rolleyes: Those beady red eyes where what we targeted on and then the kill shot............ :eek: Guys these rats were big,really big,there where no cats anywhere in the city dumps,none.... :rolleyes: There were the junk yard dogs for sure and you had to be careful anywhere near them..... :eek:
Big Teddy
We've had Toto Drakes (made in Viet Nam, of course :rolleyes:) for 6 years and they are great! Zero problems. Zero double flushes.
Pat
Pat knows what he is talking about, the ToTo Drake is one of the best non-pressure assisted toilets in the Logisphere. Prior to the installing the Drake in my own home, log jams and curt voice mails from the Boss lady were a monthly experience, since I installed the Drake we might have one log jam once every six months.
With the simple design of the Gerber or the ToTo Drake you can't go wrong. One option many of my customers go for on the ToTo is the Sanigloss Finish which makes it nearly a self cleaning toilet.
mojaveman
11-21-2010, 23:05
Since were on the subject of crap...
While on a FTX at Ft. Lewis, WA back in '83 our Lieutenant walked outside of our perimeter at night and relieved himself. Being that the ground contained many rocks he chose not to practice proper field sanitation. Later that evening some agressors were low crawling to assualt our position when suddenly we heard them. They stood and began talking about something that didn't smell too good. Apparently one of them got a nice brown stain on the front of his BDUs.
We all had a good laugh after that one.
dr. mabuse
11-22-2010, 15:53
*
Starting to think the "hole in the floor" concept used abroad may be the best solution.
Gross! :D
My brother said something like 60% of the bathrooms in Japan have bidets. And he sent me a whole diatribe regarding the plumbing in Seattle. And I just sent him the article as a joke!
Red Flag 1
11-22-2010, 19:05
Yep,leave it to Richard to lead the way.........:rolleyes:
Can't wait for Dozers inspirational comments,this is a subject he is an expert on...........;)
Big Teddy :munchin
No doubt actively installing a sh****r with four options:D.
RF 1