Where is the hardest place in the world to find household toilets? In which country are the most people waiting for access to effective sanitation? Where has access to sanitation most improved, and where is it still falling behind?
These are the questions that WaterAid has set out to answer this World Toilet Day in its new report, State of the World’s Toilets (pdf).
Among the facts and statistics included in the report, it reveals that South Sudan, Niger, Togo and Madagascar have the lowest rates of access to sanitation in the world and that India is the country with the most people – 774 million – waiting for toilets. Nations including Vietnam and Nepal have made significant progress, while Nigeria is falling behind and has more people waiting for toilets now than 25 years ago, with a serious impact on child health and nutrition.
Effective sanitation is good for business
In any place without good sanitation, you can be sure that ill health is not far behind.
More than 2.3 billion people in the world do not have access to a safe, private toilet. And of these, nearly one billion have no choice but to defecate in the open, in fields, at roadsides or in bushes.
The result is a polluted environment in which diseases spread fast: an estimated 314,000 children under five die each year of diarrhoeal illness which could be prevented with safe water, good sanitation and good hygiene. For many companies operating or sourcing from developing and emerging markets, this is a daily reality for employees, supply chain workers and their families.
And for those companies, many realise that it makes business sense to invest in effective sanitation for the communities where they operate. Children are healthier and stay in school longer when there is a safe, private toilet at home and decent toilets at school, leading to a more educated, more capable workforce to draw upon in future. Proper sanitation means less water pollution, leading to lower costs for water treatment.
The World Bank estimates that lack of water, sanitation and hygiene is costing the world $260bn (£170bn) every year due to increased healthcare costs, high mortality, school hours missed and time off work. Yet investing in water and sanitation systems has tremendous economic rewards – at least $6 (£4) return on every $1 (66p) spent on eliminating open defecation, and $3 (£2) for every $1 spent on sanitation.
When looking for ways to support universal sanitation, the new UN Global Goals - set in September - have provided the corporate world with a firm mandate.
The importance of corporate responsibility
Goal 6 focuses on ensuring the sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. It specifically sets out that, by 2030, the world’s population will have access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene, ending open defecation.
It’s in everyone’s interest to meet these goals. The corporate world has a valuable role to play by ensuring their employees have access to water, sanitation and hygiene in the workplace, respecting the human right to water and sanitation (pdf), integrating water, sanitation and hygiene into water stewardship and looking at their responsibility to help improve public health through good sanitation in the communities in which they work.
Everyone has a right to a safe, private place to relieve themselves, and to live healthy and productive lives without the threat of illness from poor sanitation and hygiene.
The state of the world’s toilets is no joke – universal access is achievable with effort from all sides.
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