Toilet Tales: Water and Waste

By ⋅ June 1, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment
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The humble flush toilet is a technological wonder that carries our waste safely away from our homes and workplaces. Yet roughly 2.5 billion people don’t have access to decent sanitation. And even for those who do, the toilet is an imperfect solution that often creates problems of its own. The World’s special five-part series “Toilet Tales: Water and Waste” examines efforts to solve those problems around the world, from China to India to Haiti to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Part 1: Eco-toilets from China

May 31st, 2011

The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports on an effort to save water and recycle nutrients in an arid part of China by building an apartment complex with dry, composting toilets. Read more…

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Interview with ecological sanitation specialist Arno Rosemarin



Part 2: The Benefits of Eco-Sanitation

May 31st, 2011

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Arno Rosemarin about the potential of dry composting toilets to help solve the world’s sanitation crisis. Rosemarin runs the ecological sanitation project at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

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Join the discussion with Arno Rosemarin in the latest science forum.

Part 3: An Indian Toilet Museum’s Public Health Mission

June 1st, 2011

The World’s Rhitu Chatterjee reports on a small museum in New Delhi that is at the center of an effort to improve sanitation for the 600 million Indians without access to modern toilets. Read more…

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Part 4: Composting Toilets in Haiti

June 2nd, 2011

The World’s Amy Bracken reports from Haiti on efforts to use composting toilets to address a host of public health and environmental problems. Read more…

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Part 5: Sanitation Solution Wins Innovation Prize

June 3rd, 2011

The World’s Jason Margolis reports on a new plan to help solve the global sanitation crisis by converting human waste into fertilzer, electricity – and profit. The idea won this year’s $100,000 MIT Entrepreneurship Prize for business Innovation. Read more…

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Discussion

2 comments for “Toilet Tales: Water and Waste”

  • Anonymous

    The Chinese case you described failed to work because of contractors’ corruption. Any future effort must include a lot of checking (monitoring), to make sure the systems are set up and managed properly. A lot of good “development” ideas fail not because they’re technically weak, but because they were not sincerely tried. The social side of these projects is just as important as the engineering side. Ignoring this fact causes a lot of wasted resources and human suffering.
    Dr. Suzanne Hanchett
    (I have worked as a social anthropologist advising development projects and doing background research for 20 years, mostly in Bangladesh, sometimes on sanitation. Our website is http://www.planningalternatives.com)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SH67QQFLSZ2XYOXL5WKWDHGJQY Anonymous

    This is an excellent introduction to the world of ecological sanitation, the efforts to bring decent sanitation to the 40% of the world’s people who do not yet have it, and the positive byproducts of biogas and fertile compost.  Radio can be such a powerful way to communicate, and “The World” has used it well with Toilet Tales.  Your reporting on this is comprehensive, going all around the world, yet somewhat in depth as well (broad and deep) – thanks for achieving such a balance. 

    In future, if you come back to this subject, it will be good to include some more details about the specific public health benefits which result from improved personal sanitation (reducing and eliminating open defecation and insanitary, unmaintained pit latrines – and replacing this with dry toilets and where appropriate, piped sewerage systems).  As the world’s large and small cities continue to grow at incredibly fast rates, the continuing lack of sanitation is going to only increase as a major threat to the public’s health.