On a need to go basis
Published 06 November 2008
The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste
Rose George Portobello Books, 304pp, £12.99
On a need to go basis
In Hackney, Polish migrants used one as overnight accommodation, in Paris they are free of charge, while in China they have no doors. “To be uninterested in the public toilet is to be uninterested in life,” suggests Rose George in her righteously indiscreet and humane exploration of the global politics of human defecation. Embarrassed while using the doorless communal toilets of Sichuan, George explains that the desire for privacy is a product of 19th-century urbanisation, which turned a natural bodily function into “a hidden, shameful one”.
George is indignant on behalf of the 2.6 billion people who have no sanitation. Four in ten live surrounded by human excrement, many ingest ten grams of faeces daily. Poor sanitation and hygiene and unsafe water cause one in ten of the world’s illnesses, including diarrhoea, and kills a child every 15 seconds.
We read the stories of those challenging the “stagnant status quo of sanitation”, like the founder of a women’s group in rural China promoting the use of biogas digesters, which produce energy and benefit the environment. George fundamentally believes that the way a society disposes of human excrement is an indication of how it treats its humans.
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