Seeking Loo-topia

In 2010, journalist Chelsea Wald was on assignment at a science camp in Alaska. When nature called, she and the other residents trudged up steps to elevated outhouses over large tanks in which waste was vacuumed out and hauled away by truck. She thought the setup a mite primitive for 21st century America, but as her reporting and research on sanitation expanded, she regarded the situation as “a microcosm of the world’s poop problem.” 

Most people in the developed world flush and forget, with barely a thought to where their waste goes or how it’s handled. Billions of people in poor and developing countries have no infrastructure for handling human waste. Wald believes we must change that, since poor sanitation and inattention can poison people and eco-systems and can affect increasingly stressed resources. Her book, “Pipe Dreams,” addresses the issues as she aims for what she calls “Loo-topia.” 

Subtitled “The Urgent Global Quest to Transform The Toilet,” it’s an informative, engaging dive into human excreta. And who doesn’t enjoy a good yarn about pooping and peeing? 

Wald traveled to India and South Africa and Kenya and Dubai and the Netherlands and Haiti and towns all over America. She interviewed a lot of smart, committed people who want to improve lives and communities via better sanitation, such as a personable salesman in Indonesia peddling cleanliness one toilet and septic tank at a time – a Johnny Crappleseed, if you will. 

Chapters include “Taking the Piss – We’re going to need more pipes,” “Eating Sh!t – That sludge isn’t going to digest itself,” and “Potty Talk – Let’s analyze the shit out of this.” Wald provides a bunch of factoids, both interesting and alarming: the average person produces 100 pounds of poop and 140 gallons of pee per year; approximately 700 million people use toilets that amount to open defecation, according to a World Health Organization study from several years ago; another 600 million don’t have private toilets in their homes, but share with surrounding households or neighborhoods; nearly 2.2 billion people have what’s called basic sanitation, that’s actually long on “basic” and short on “sanitation” with little or no waste treatment; one outfit estimated that women worldwide spend 97 billion hours per year looking for safe and clean places to relieve themselves, which is more time than the total number of hours worked in Germany annually; one study estimated that for every dollar spent on universal sanitation, an average return of $5.50 can be expected, in areas of reduced health care costs and a more productive workforce; a 2017 report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. wastewater infrastructure a D-plus, due to aging and inadequate systems. 

Wald writes that the toilet as most of us know it is both an engineering marvel and woefully outdated for present times and challenges. People adapt to new and changing technologies all the time and often demand improvements, yet the toilet hasn’t changed much in more than 100 years, and we’re mostly good with it. 

I recall that several in the audience are advocates of bidets (bidevotees?) and Japanese robo-toilets with sprayers and dryers and automatic lids and heated seats and such. That the next generation of toilets and waste practices hasn’t caught on here is due largely to the Victorian-era remnant of “ick factor” related to excreta and an unwillingness to even broach the subject. A combination of stigma about human waste and uncleanliness, along with cost of toilets, septic systems and basic sanitation make it a tough sell in many poor and developing countries, as well. 

History has taught us to think of the toilet as a trash can, Wald writes, when it holds the potential to be a recycling bin. Think fertilizer and disinfectants and nutrients and fuel and microbes and compost. Women are more impacted and inconvenienced than men in waste management, particularly when you factor in menstruation. The poor are more impacted than the wealthy. 

If you aren’t inclined to become a commode crusader, Wald has plenty of suggestions for simply assisting the waste movement. Learn about your own sewage or septic system. Upgrade to low-flow or improved toilets. Don’t flush anything other than the three P’s – pee, poop and (toilet) paper; discard everything else. Monitor wastewater systems and water quality in your area. Speak up for those being shamed for peeing, pooping and menstruating. Advocate for safe conditions and good pay for wastewater workers. Talk about toilets and pooping and peeing – maybe not at the dinner table, but most everywhere else is fair game. The pandemic highlighted the ease with which pathogens spread and underscored the importance of hygiene and best health practices. Waste management, or mis-management, can loose pathogens and spread all manner of health problems. Hurricanes, floods, rising seas and climate-induced disasters can cripple massive sewage systems. 

If we’re to become more self-sustaining, we’ll have to use all the resources at our disposal. Though if we reach a point where we’re re-purposing and re-using our waste, I’ll be leery of the next generation of shiitake mushrooms and mung beans.