Today is World Toilet Day

The World Toilet Organization (WTO), a public advocacy group with chapters in 44 member states, has declared November 19, 2007 as World Toilet Day. "The purpose of this day", the WTO's website states, "is to have people in all countries take action, increase awareness of toilet user's right to a better toilet environment, and to demand it from toilet owners". Advocates for improved sanitation can sign an online petition, plan coursework at the WTC's Training Academy, or sign up for the World Toilet Summit.

For many of us in the developed world, all this talk about the toilet bowl seems like a bizarre bit of bathroom humor. According to the WTO, however, over 2.6 billion people lack any form of what the United Nations calls "improved sanitation". In describing the "real situation" as "even worse", the WTO notes that over one-sixth of the world's population (that's 1.1 billion people, folks) use sewer systems which discharge largely-untreated waste into lakes, rivers, streams, and the ocean. Another study on the WTO website claims that of this 1.1 billion, only 30% have their sewage treated "in an environmentally acceptable way."

So Who Invented the Toilet?

Although you won't find any "Happy World Toilet Day" cards at your local Hallmark store, there are some early inventors who are worth remembering today. Sir John Harrington, a godson of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, designed a primitive "necessary" for Her Royal Highness in 1596. Two hundred years later, Alexander Cummings lifted the lid on Harrington's clogged design and rechristened it as "the Strap". Samuel Prosser then earned a patent for his own "plunger closet" in 1777.

A year later, Joseph Bramah followed suit, designing a toilet with a valve at the bottom of the bowl. This primitive ballcock was so effective that Bramah's "water closet" was used extensively aboard ships. The waste, of course, was discharged directly into the ocean. Two hundred and twenty-nine years later, on November 19, 2007, the WTC decreed World Toilet Day to decry such untreated discharges.

Resources:

https://www.worldtoilet.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Toilet_Organization