World Toilet Day

When we see the acronym “WTO,” we typically think World Trade Organization. But there is another WTO, one that is much more important and fundamental—the World Toilet Organization. It was founded on November 19, 2001. And, therefore, the United Nations has designated November 19 each year as World Toilet Day.

You can make all the jokes you wish—is this the world’s number two problem?—but sanitation is a major issue around the world. According to the United Nations, 4.2 billion people live without “safely managed sanitation,” which means toilet facilities that effectively collect, treat and dispose of human wastes, and do it so people are safe and dignified. Nearly 700 million people have no sanitation facilities at all, so they defecate on the ground—not sanitary, not safe, not dignified.

And not healthy. Inadequate toilets and related sanitation facilities (like someplace to wash your hands after defecating) cause 432,000 deaths each year because of diarrhea and parasitic infections. About 1000 children under 5 die from these causes every day. These issues cause lots of related problems, especially for women and girls—absence from school, violence in unsafe locations, loss of productivity. Turns out that investing $1 in better sanitation realizes more than $4 in increased productivity.

Just before the turn of the last century, a successful businessman from Singapore gave up his career and took up the cause of improving sanitation. Jack Sim is now known universally as Mr. Toilet. Starting in his homeland and spreading globally, he and his organization, the WTO, have advocated for better sanitation to whomever would listen. He started the idea of World Toilet Day in 2001, when he founded WTO, and the United Nations endorsed it as an official day in 2013.

It hasn’t been easy to get the world’s attention. Sim says, “It’s called a brown issue because it’s brown in color. Funders [and] donors love “green” issues and “blue” issues — water, forest, animals, then children, women, climate change. These are beautiful pictures you can show, but toilets, sanitation, shit, sewage treatment is really uncomfortable.” So, he uses humor to get the idea across, often dressing as the poop emoji or snapping toilet selfies in unlikely places and poses. “We have to compete with Kim Kardashian and football. When you’re at the bottom of the pile, humor helps a lot.”