World Toilet Day 2020

World Toilet Day raises awareness of the 4.2 billion people living without access to safely-managed sanitation. Half of the global population’s toilets are not connected to sewerage. Waste can build up in pits or tanks leaving the poorest and most isolated with a growing volume of sludge that has become a health and environmental timebomb.

Poor sanitation results in death and disease. It also costs the global economy an estimated US$223 billion a year through lost work time. And it also comes with a social cost, entrenching prejudices such as the stigmatization of the Dalit caste in India as the country’s toilet emptiers.

If the world is to achieve the UN’s goal of providing adequate sanitation and ending open defecation worldwide in the next 10 years, the faecal waste crisis must be addressed in a systematic way using fresh thinking.

For World Toilet Day 2020 we have pulled together recent stories and examples of IWMI research that aim to reduce the waste burden with applied technologies, business models promoting a waste-based circular economy and policies that support public-private partnerships.