Snakey Starbucks surprise

In the news this week is the story of a Texan man who was started by a snake at his local Starbucks when he went to use the loo. Bruce Ahlswede responded as anyone would - he called in staff and his wife to take a look.

Fortunately, the snake was harmless and disappeared shortly after the man's wife snapped a photo.

Snakes in toilets are such a regular occurrence that I could dedicate whole blog posts to them. From rattlesnakes in porta-loos to cobras using loos to gain access to classrooms, there really is a horror story for every occasion.

In August, a Croatian student found this massive snake in the toilet of her uncle's place where she goes to study, because it's quiet...  While not poisonous (like that somehow makes it okay!) the snake is still terrifying. The student and her family named the snake Bosko.

Bosko - the completely unterrifying and friendly toilet snake...

Other folks haven't been quite so lucky. Earlier this year, an Israeli man had his penis bitten by a non-venomous snake. Despite his injury, paramedics say the man was able to 'have a laugh at his own expense'.

Of course, we who have the luxury of toilets shouldn't complain. Toilet snake attacks are relatively rare. It could be worse - you could have to pee outside where you're really in danger of getting bitten.

Friday flush 15 June 2012

Ten tonnes of toilet paper aflame!

Luckily this didn't end up with anyone hurt, but in Ohio a trailer carrying ten tonnes of toilet paper caught alight, spilling the cargo onto the highway. Holy flaming bog roll!

Indian railways committed to loos

Utilising World Environment Day, Indian railways have proclaimed a new standard in provision for toilets across the network. Pay-and-use toilets will now be an 'essential service' to passengers at all railway stations, including disabled access toilets, lighting and round-the-clock attendants. The new concept is Renovate, Operate, Maintain and Transfer (ROMT). Not sure what the Transfer bit is about...

Punning on WTO

Jack Sim from the World Toilet Organisation (WTO) claims he was the first to break the taboo on sanitation. Well, I don't want to gloss over the really important stuff that many WASH organisations have been doing since before 2001 (WaterAid comes to mind), but I do admire Jack for getting the sanitation message out there. People gotta poop!

Why WASH?

You don't have to be a boglogger enthusiast to know that having a clean place to crap can save you from a whole host of horrible diseases. Preventable deaths of children under 5 is possible - if we commit to sanitation and hygiene for all.

Coca-cola on the clean water front

And finally, an unexpected feel-good story. While I find their commitment to fitness and nutrition laughable, I have to commend the Coca-Cola Foundation for providing significant grants towards water stewardship, conservation and education. With a total cash amount of $1,279,614, the grants will help to provide improved access to water and sanitation to communities in the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. A further $7 million will go towards water and sanitation activities through the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation which works across 17 African countries. Well done, you evil bastards :-)


Until next week, I hope all your poos are safe poos.

Divisions of labour

In the 'Boring but important' section of The Week this week, there's a story about India's push to provide a toilet for every Indian household by 2012. Currently, dry toilets are 'serviced' by people who are considered untouchable. Plenty of work has been done by organisations such as Sulabh International to provide different job opportunities for these shit clearers, but plenty more needs to be done.

Also in the same section was a statistic that says Australian adults are spending more time at work and with families; as a result, men are spending less time on housework, while women are spending more.

The progress in sharing housework that was recorded from 1992 to 1997 has now stalled.

I can't understand why, in a modern age, the division of housework is still a point of contention between men and women. Surely everyone wants to live in a moderately clean home and each person should work to their strengths. Don't like a stinky toilet - clean it! Can't stand doing dishes - leave it to your partner. Take out the garbage instead.

Sometimes I think the fundamentally patriarchal nature of male-female relationships in western society means that things like housework will continue to be a sticking point. Housework will always be seen as 'women's work' as long as women continue to be encouraged to value aesthetics over function.

(Of course, I hardly need to add that all people are encouraged to value aesthetics in 'feminine' things, such as women's personal appearance and domestic lives. When viewing men and manly things, they should desire strength and a sense of humour.)

(I also don't need to add that most of the shit lifters in India are women, in spite of the fact that women in slum areas of India have little or no access to toilets for their own use.)

Women and children

Bog Standard is not just a brilliant name for a campaign - it is a brilliant campaign. Launched in October 2004, Bog Standard aims to improve toilet facilities for school children in the UK, and it has brought the issue of toilets for pupils to the fore. It is headed by ERIC (Education and Resources for Improving Childhood Continence), an organisation primarily concerned with continence issues amongst young people.

Also organised by ERIC is the Water is Cool in School campaign. The adequate provision of water is a crucial element in ensuring good toilet habits, and the two campaigns are inextricably linked. Children and young people have continence and soiling problems for all sorts of reasons, but one major contributor is not drinking enough water. This can lead to a reduced bladder capacity. The Water is Cool in School campaign was launched in 2000 aiming to get drinking water out of the lavs and into the spotlight - and in this health conscious age of tackling childhood obesity it's an important campaign. It has had considerable success in changing the culture of drinking water in schools; a survey in 2003 found that many schools are now permitting or even encouraging drink bottles in the classroom.

But the ERIC team realised that they needed to look a few steps backwards; the reason some children don't drink water at school is so that they can avoid the toilets.

Bad lavs can mean anything from poor provisions, lack of privacy, dirty or vandalised facilities, accessibility issues and the presence of bullies. If children don't feel comfortable going to the toilet or feel rushed they may stop too early, not emptying their bladder completely. Or they may not go at all. Good clean toilets are key to improving toilet habits; but children also need to know that their toilets are free of bullies and smokers, that they have plenty of time and privacy to completely empty their bladder and bowels and to not feel ashamed. They need to know they can go when they need to go. I've never been shy about the toilet, but I can imagine that for some children having to ask the teacher to go to the toilet every hour must be humiliating. ERIC goes so far as to say that the lack of suitable facilities, privacy and time for children to go to the toilet is a breach of their human rights.

In Delhi, a young woman has conducted a survey which found that only 4 percent of the public toilets provided in the city are designed for use by women! From May to July 2008, Shahana Sheikh toured the slums of New Delhi counting up the toilets. As a result of her report, the Delhi High Court has directed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to file a status report within four weeks, regarding public toilet provision for women in slum areas.

"What is this mere talk of women empowerment and feminism worth if there is no provision of something as basic as toilet facilities for the poorest of poor women," asks Sheikh.

It seems to me that in this International Year of Sanitation, we need to particularly look at the toilet situation for women and children.

For more information, visit:

http://www.wateriscoolinschool.org.uk/

http://www.eric.org.uk/

http://www.bog-standard.org/

Saturday Skiddie 30.08.08

Hi all and welcome to this week's Friday Flush Saturday Skiddie.

An artist in New York is bringing his style to the streets - toilet stall style. Ricky Syers has been walking around dressed as a janitor carrying a toilet with a man inside. Pretty cool stuff, really. And being an enterprising American chap, he is now selling advertising space on his toilet.



I love it when people find innovative ways to raise money (like the couple who cycled to raise money for a toilet for their church), and in Kansas this week The Flying Pig Studio and Gallery is auctioning 40 decorative toilet seats to raise money for new restrooms.

Plans call for the restroom to be named "Bowl Plaza" with buildings shaped like toilet tanks and entrances resembling a toilet seat. A walkway will look like an unfurling roll of toilet paper.
www.kansas.com

The town of Madrid, New Mexico has unveiled its first public toilets. Up until now, visitors have had to make do with portable toilets. One lucky resident was even presented with a key to the new restroom.



The man who was struck with a toilet cistern lid in Canada last week has unfortunately died. Second-degree murder charges have been laid against the attacker.

New Zealand Olympians have been suspended after photographing a fellow athlete on the toilet. Swimmers Cameron Gibson, Dean Kent and Corney Swanepoel were expelled from the Olympic village and may face further penalties. I think this seems a little harsh - but then again, I haven't seen the photos, and they are supposedly of one of the youngest members of the team.

And finally, New Delhi college student, Shahana Sheikh, has prepared a report highlighting the dearth of toilets for women in the Indian capital, prompting the High Court to take direct action.

"One day during my internship with CCS [Centre for Civil Society] I saw a woman cleaning a public toilet at Yusuf Sarai. It struck me that though she was cleaning the toilet, she herself couldn't use it since it was meant only for men - like most public toilets in Delhi. I decided to find out the real status of public conveniences in the city," Sheikh said. "People talk about feminism all the time but nobody thinks of a need as basic as a toilet for them despite the fact that our chief minister and mayor are both women," she added.

That's a wrap for this week. I'm going to go lay myself down and dream about a walkway unfurling like a roll of toilet paper. *sigh* What happiness.

Friday Flush 15.08.08

I recently did a study of female toilet users in pubs, trying to get an idea of what women like and don't like about public toilets. I was surprised that one of the things that came out top of the list was hand dryers - most women prefer hand towels. Dryers often don't work, take too long, and only one person at a time can use them, meaning that most people just dry their hands on their trousers. Dyson New Zealand has possibly addressed some of these problems; they unveiled the Dyson Airblade this week at Auckland airport.

 

 

Dyson claims the dryer (or is it drier?) is the "fastest, most hygienic hand dryer". It works by blasting a "high speed sheet of air, which gently squeegees your hands dry". That sounds kinda sexy. You can see it in all its sexiness at their very sexy website. It took the engineers an incredible 3 years to develop this next step in hand-drying technology. The Airblade was actually released in 2006 but I'm unsure how high the uptake has been. It's certainly the first time I've heard of it.

 

Ho Chi Minh City's attempts to "work towards a civilized urban lifestyle" have been hindered by a lack of suitable sites for public toilets. Residents are concerned about having toilets built in front of their houses - but presumably they don't mind if people urinate in the gutter. The stigma attached to public toilets needs to be mollified by designing buildings that aesthetically complement the districts - but with only a month to build them, I'm not sure if that'll be possible.

 

No such problems finding sites for toilets in Pune, India - they've installed 110 toilets in their homes. Friends of Shelter Associates (USA) has constructed toilets for sex workers, people with disabilities and those living below the poverty line. Another fabulous NGO doing great work in this International Year of Sanitation.

 

It's not very often that I wished I lived in Canada - but OH MY GOD they have a toilet festival! Organised by Oxfam, the festival aims to raise awareness about water and sanitation issues in developing countries.

 

I do however very often wish that I lived in the UK because it's the only place in the world where you could hold a From Looe for a Loo challenge. Bob and Chris May cycled 300 miles from Loo to Dymock to raise £1500 for a toilet at St Mary's church.

 

Toilet blog Where's the Toilet? has given an incredible 9 out of 10 to the toilets at Raffles Beach Singapore. This is a much pleasanter story about toilets than one usually hears about Singapore.

 

And finally tonight, a German toilet collector (that is, a German who is a toilet collector, not a collector of German toilets) spent £1,800 pounds for a rare toilet - only to discover that he had purchased a tiny replica. What do you do with a collection of toilets? Maybe you open a toilet museum. No, too obvious. How about a toilet restaurant?

 

(I never thought I'd add 'food' as a category on The Bog Logger).

 

And that is, folks, The Bog Logger signing off on this gorgeous half-way-through-the-Olympics Friday.

The Friday Flush

I have so much loo news to get through that it's not possible to comment on everything. So I introduce The Friday Flush!

 

Loo News

 

Voting for America's Best Restroom is currently open.

 

Officials in India are keeping the streets clean by offering money to people to use urinals. I'm not sure if that's awesome or stupid. I welcome suggestions.

 

Pride London has apologised after some event staff asked trans people to use a disabled toilet, apparently because they were so tall amongst all those short lesbians. Hey! Not all lesbians are short! People are more civilised in Thailand; a school in Si Sa Ket has created separate toilets for its 200 trans students.

 

A ridiculous gadget claims to 'promote better relationships' because it enables users to lift and lower the toilet seat without touching the often soiled seat. Whatever.

 

Taiwan decided flushing toilet paper down the toilet paper was okay, and then decided it wasn't, because 82 per cent of of toilets flow directly into river and waterways. Taiwan uses 340 tonnes of toilet paper a day. Better to turn that into landfill, I say.

 

Sloan Valve Company's new High Efficiency Toilet (HET) Systems have all sorts of sensor-flushy-solar-electro doovies to make your toilet super efficient. I think.

 

There's a few stories about China allegedly poshing up its toilets so that Westerners don't find them so offensive. As someone who has lived in China let me tell you that I'm very skeptical.

 

And to finish, Geri Haliwell loves talking about poo and wee. Good on you Geri.

 

Openings

In Colchester, the town centre toilets are open again, and 'the first 50 customers to use the new arty loos in Lion Walk received a commemorative loo-roll', designed by the artists. That's so awesome I can't even speak. No pic yet, but maybe soon.

The toilets are the first to be refurbished as part of Colchester Borough Council’s  Creative Conveniences project, during which a partnership of arts, street and tourism officers have worked together to improve the look, feel and function of a selection of Colchester’s public conveniences.

That's so cool it deserves its own post. Oh, man, I need more time!!

 

Staying in the UK, COLDSTREAM and Eyemouth are top of the list to have their public toilets refurbished and also to get a town attendant each, responsible for cleaning the toilets and other general duties around the town. I'm such a fan of toilet attendants. It's a really important job, and it also keeps toilets human - something I advocate strongly.

Closings

For every toilet that opens, dozens are closed. Angry Burnham-On-Sea town councillors this week threatened to withdraw £35,000 of funding for the district council in protest at the authority's decision to shut down and sell the town's seafront toilets. And in Borehamwood, the Community Toilet Scheme proposed 18 months ago is still not off the ground.

Sulabh liberates 60,000 scavengers, tots up $32 mn revenue: UNDP

Sulabh International is the reason I became interested in all things
toilety. Its good work has been highlighted in a UN report this week.
the story below is from www.mangalorean.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
New Delhi, July 1 (IANS) Sulabh International, a 38-year-old movement
promoting low-cost safe sanitation in the country, has liberated over
60,000 scavengers, a report by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) released Tuesday said.

The report, focusing on the various strategies adopted across the
world to engage the poor, additionally said Sulabh's revenues reached
$32 million in 2005, with approximately $5 million in surplus.

Sulabh maintains 6,500 public pay per-use toilets and by 2006, had
installed 1.4 million household toilets. An estimated 10 million
people used its facilities across the country, the report said.

"The public toilets run by Sulabh break even within eight to nine
months," it added. "Facilities in prominent places were highly
profitable."

There is ample scope for replication and even scaling up of the Sulabh
model that its founder Bindheshwar Pathak started in 1970, UNDP said.

"State governments that used to invite Sulabh into single-party
tenders have now started inviting competitive bids to build and run
public toilets," it noted.

The UNDP report noted that while it was officially said in 2003 that
India had 676,000 scavengers - people, mainly women, who eke out a
living lifting human excreta - unofficial estimates peg the figure at
1.2 million.

Of them, Sulabh had liberated 60,000 through various skill development
and adult literacy programmes; for instance, it trains women in food
processing and markets their products.

It has successfully used internal and external resources to start an
English medium school and a variety of business incubators targeted at
the erstwhile scavengers to get them accepted in mainstream society,
the report said.

Sulabh, which employs over 50,000 associates and presently operates in
26 states, also trained 19,000 masons who could build low-cost,
twin-pit toilets using locally available materials, UNDP said.

Focusing on the constraints Sulabh faced when it started off, the
report identified three key hurdles.

First, there was a lack of market information: businesses just did not
know whether poor people would pay to use toilets and related
facilities or install toilets.

Second, there existed an acute lack of widespread knowledge on
propagating low-cost hygiene solutions.

And finally, perhaps the most critical factor: the poor did not have
access to finance to provide for sanitation.

The report then highlights the strategies Sulabh adopted to overcome
these obstacles.

It first developed an initial pilot project and demonstrated the
popularity of pay-per-use toilet facilities in urban Bihar and
pioneered the low-cost toilet model to be installed in poor
residential areas.

Next, it constructed a museum and planned for a sanitation university,
took its own designs and trained other non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), and started policy dialogue with governments.

"Sulabh influenced the central government and over 100,000 public
toilets will be constructed in addition to local government's
provision of toilet-related loans and subsidies," the report said.

IANS

This News is featured in Mangalorean.com
www.Mangalorean.com

I'm baaack!

The BogLogger is moving countries - AGAIN - so I've been busy with finishing work and packing and arranging visas and all that sort of fun stuff. The good news is that I can now compare New Zealand toilets to Australian toilets and see which is better. Of course, the Aussies will say theirs are better and the Kiwis will say that the Aussies stole them.

*sigh*

I have 990 toilet related articles in Google Reader to read so I may not be posting a full story today. In the meantime, read about former Indian sanitation workers who are off to New York this month through the wonderful activities of my favourite organisation Sulabh International.

Tomb toilet users say no to roofless loo

A lot of news out of India this week about the use, misuse, abuse and disuse of toilets.

First up in Ainapur, an historic tomb is being used as a toilet by local residents, much to the fury of Raju S Vijapur. That reminds me of my trip to Pompeii back in 2000 - really, I'd never seen so much human excrement in a public space.

Over in Erode, The Hindu reports that an incomplete toilet has stood roofless for 2 years. There is a push on in the area to install private toilets in people's homes and so the building hasn't had the funding it needs to be completed. While locals say that the roofless structure can't be used for anything else, the story doesn't say if it's still suitable as a toilet - perhaps if the local government body renamed it the Pudur Panchayat Tomb locals would start using it.

In Hyderabad, the State government has responded to reports of poor hygiene in teaching hospitals by contracting Sulabh to maintain their toilets. Sulabh International is one of my favourite organisations; they provide user-pays toilets and hygiene facilities to Indian villages and use the profits to educate children who would otherwise be human waste collectors.

But I think the most interesting bog news today is a short story out of the US. A 13 year old boy has allegedly used his teacher's lunchbox to urinate in, when she wouldn't let him go to the toilet.

I hope he did so to make a statement about the ridiculousness of placing constraints on our bladders. I've been in meetings where I've been too embarrassed to get up and go to the loo, the expectation being that one should wait until the end of the meeting. I'm all for strengthening pelvic floor muscles, but don't tell me to hold onto a full bladder for three quarters of an hour and expect me to pay attention! There's an assumption that as adults we should 'know better', plan our toilet breaks appropriately and not interrupt public or social events with toilet calls, but I think that's unrealistic. Most of us simply aren't thinking about our bladders all the time. I still find myself saying, many, many years after being toilet trained, "But I didn't need to go earlier!"

And the really fab news is that when you do need to go in Japan you can use Microsoft Vista toilet paper. Honestly, you couldn't make that up.

World Toilet Summit 2007

The World Toilet Summit has just wrapped up in New Delhi. Supported by the great people at the World Toilet Organisation, the summit was a platform for government organisations, non-government organisations, town-planners, architects and UN bodies to develop strategies to alleviate the (developing) world's sanitation problems.

What problems, you ask?

The summit organisers state that "2.6 billion people, more than 40% of the world population, do not use a toilet, but defecate in the open or in unsanitary places. The Millennium Development Goal-7, Target-10 has been set up, to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation which is still a colossal task before the world community".