The eighth annual World Toilet Summit and Expo, which opens today in Macau, looks at how to provide affordable, environmentally friendly and basic access to sanitation. Forty percent of the world’s population — 2.5 billion people — do not have access to a hygienic toilet, according to the Singapore-based World Toilet Organization, and that leads to sewage flowing directly into waterways, affecting coastal and marine ecosystems and exposing millions of people to disease. The U.N., which has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation, says about 90 percent of sewage and 70 percent of industrial waste in developing countries are discharged, untreated, into waterways, often polluting the usable water supply.
At the summit, companies like Switzerland’s Geberit International will be on hand to show off the latest in sanitation technology, and this year’s conference features a Sustainable Sanitation Pavilion exhibiting the latest in low-water and waterless toilet systems. Some low-water toilets have a dual flush system, using a larger amount of water for solid waste and a smaller amount for urine. But the WTO believes advanced dry toilets could be the future of the technology.
“It makes no sense to flush excreta with precious drinking water and try to filter it back again,” the WTO said on its web site. “This is too costly in terms of money and energy.” Although many so-called dry toilet systems throughout the world consist of a simple hole in the ground, new systems can treat human excreta as a resource. According to a paper on ecological sanitation from the Stockholm Environment Institute, urine and feces can be stored and processed on site in a waterless system, and then further processed off site until they are free of disease. The nutrients in the excreta are then recycled by using them as fertilizer.
If you can make it over to Macau, take a look at the solar-powered commodes that can run without water, and the whole-bathroom systems that convert waste into biogas, which can then be used to provide hot water for bathing and washing.
The WTO (not to be confused with that other WTO) is one of the few organizations to focus on toilets instead of water. General water efficiency and sanitation technologies tend to receive more attention and resources than technology sporting the slightly more embarrassing “toilet” moniker. The nonprofit group says on its web site that founder Jack Sim created the WTO to break the taboo of toilet and sanitation and legitimize it for mainstream culture. The WTO works with groups including the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and Habitat for Humanity on improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide.
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