A couple weeks ago on Nov. 19, it was World Toilet day. This may seem like a silly joke, but there is more to it than just a funny sounding holiday. This holiday which began in 2001 by the United Nations was created to bring awareness to how people over the world do not have easy access to a toilet which is a huge health concern. Almost 3.4 billion people across the world don’t have safe sanitation and about 300 million people use the outdoors to do their business. 

Using the bathroom outdoors is called open defecation and brings unwanted diseases to people. Many feces related diseases spread which causes 1,000 kids to die everyday from the poor sanitation and unclean water sources.  

One man, named Marc Silver took a trip to a community in Kenya to put the crisis in perspective. He saw many different things that most people in America would not see on a daily basis. He reported seeing, “diapers floating amid the trash in a water-filled gutter” and a multitude of other sights. 

The problem isn’t rooted in more toilets being produced and brought into these communities, but the idea of sewage systems, but this is easier said than done.

With the steady growth of the world population, there needs to be more innovative ways to deal with sewage because many different areas are occupied by people living their day to day lives. Most people do not realize the price to maintain sewage systems. About 15,00 liters is used per person per year to move all the human feces to a sewage plant. So it is a big investment to implement a plant to smaller countries and poorer communities. Many people are wanting to raise more awareness of the topic of clean and safe sanitation around the world, hence the holiday being named World Toilet Day, a silly name to bring up conversations of a serious problem.