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Oh Shit!

No Toilets, No Peace

By | Health, Oh Shit! | One Comment

Sanitation and women’s rights are closely entwined. West Virginia barred women from jury duty until 1956, claiming courthouses lacked female toilets. In 1994 a Texan firm fired dozens of women rather than provide extra lavatories. Until 1993, female senators had to jostle with the tourists visiting Capitol Hill because no rest rooms were assigned to them.

In developing countries, unequal provision means more than just discomfort. Millions of women are forced to walk long distances to find some privacy, or wait for the cover of darkness before they can relieve themselves. Even though it is a basic need common to every human being, frightening experiences of violence that create fear, shame, and anger are not uncommon.

According to WaterAid, more than one in three women worldwide are living without even a basic pit latrine. Of these, 526 million women have no choice but to go to the toilet out in the open. One in three women (over one billion women worldwide) will also experience physical, sexual or emotional violence in her lifetime. For the world’s poorest women and girls, these two basic human rights violations often go hand in hand. One in three women is a shockingly high figure. The combination of insufficient sanitation, and violence against women, which both stem from gender-based discrimination, could seem intractable. But, there are solutions.

One is to raise awareness and stand up against violence. One Billion Rising is a movement created by Eve Ensler, the author of the Vagina Monologues, to tackle the issue of violence against women. Risings have been planned around the world in 199 countries, creating a Feminist TsunamiBaltimore Rising is the local response to this international movement. The local event kicks-off at 5:30pm on Thursday, February 14th at the Washington Monument (699 N. Charles St, Baltimore). Visit the Facebook page and join the movement to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. Not in Baltimore? Not a problem, click on the map to locate an event near you.

A second is for communities to get innovative with their campaigns. In Haryana, a northeastern state in India where the number of rural households with toilets has risen considerably from 29 percent in 2001 to an impressive 98 percent in the last five years, women are doing just that. The “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign, launched by the Ministry of Rural Development, has resulted in the construction of approximately 1.71 million toilets across the state. The movement takes advantage of the fact that Haryana suffers form a warped sex ratio, a result of India’s cultural preference for boys over girls. The scarcity of brides in the state helps prospective brides use their bargaining power to force their suitors to construct toilets for them before they marry.

That one in three women will experience physical and/or sexual abuse in her lifetime is unacceptable. That one in three women and girls don’t have safe access to a toilet is inexcusable. Access to safe, adequate sanitation is a basic human right. Being able to go to the toilet without the fear of rape, sexual assault, physical abuse or humiliation is a human right.

Change will not happen unless we can empower their voices. Now is the time to shout.

IMAGE CREDIT. Courtesy of Sustainable sanitation.

Classic Shit

By | Health, Oh Shit! | One Comment

In a vintage post, sanitation & social justice blogger-extraordinaire Shannon McGarry rolls up her sleeves and delves into the depths of Dalit degradation – the world’s greatest ongoing human rights violation, which most of the world knows nothing about

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Photo by: Metassus

MOOve Over Oil: Cows May Heat Your Home

By | Health, Oh Shit! | No Comments

An alternative fuel source is cooking that could change the nation. Its official name is biogas technology, but it is more affectionately referred to as “Cow Power.”

Here’s how it works: manure and other organic wastes are fed into anaerobic digesters – a technology that converts methane into clean, renewable energy – to produce biogas. This gas fuels a generator, and voila! … Electricity, which can then be distributed through the electrical grid. Alternatively, the natural gas can be fed into pipe systems for fuel.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, more than half of  Sweden’s 11,500 natural gas vehicles are fueled on biogas. And both Germany and Austria are working towards a goal of 20 percent biogas in all natural gas used to fuel vehicles.

While biogas technology has been slower to take hold here in the United States, biogas energy projects are rapidly popping up in states such as Vermont, Wisconsin, and New York. Some 80 percent of the estimated 160 biogas energy projects in the U.S. are currently installed on dairy farms, which then combust the gas to generate electricity.  The combined installed capacity of all dairy farm projects is nearly 60 Mega Watts.

This represents only a fraction of the estimated 8,000 farms across the nation that could support some method of biogas energy production. It is estimated that the total electrical capacity of all these farms could range as high as 1,600 MW, or about 10 percent of the nation’s current electricity needs.

Not convinced? Check out the new documentary Cow Power, which highlights the history and science behind the Green Mountain Power Cow Power project; one of the first utilities in Vermont that generates electricity created from cow manure.

The GMP Cow Power energy initiative provides grants and technical support to local Vermont dairy farmers who choose to install anaerobic methane digesters on their farms in an effort to reduce electricity costs and carbon footprints. It is one example of many similar projects scattered throughout the country that seek to marry good economics with healthy, and sustainable communities.

And, while “Cowpower” isn’t currently available to power our lives here in Baltimore, we can still get a piece of the action, power-up and become the envy of our neighbors with a DIY methane converter.  It seems to me that this simple, small-scale solution could be used throughout Baltimore to help create resilient, healthy and sustainable neighborhoods.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AZv6MjZylo?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]

 

People-Poo Paper: The New Woodless Paper

By | Health, Oh Shit! | No Comments

I continue to be impressed with the growing number of green innovations that transform human waste into a renewable and profitable source of energy.  This week, I discovered that Israeli entrepreneur and CEO of Applied CleanTech (ACT), Rafael Aharon, has developed a system that uses human sewage to produce paper.

I had heard of natural, recycled and odorless paper products made from poop of various fiber-eating vegetarian animals such as elephants, cows, horses, moose, pandas, and donkeys, but paper produced from people poop? This was something new.

As you can image, I nearly shot out of my seat with excitement and immediately began the quest to figure out how it was done. It turns out that it is a relatively simple process.

To make poo paper from human waste, the technology extracts solids from sewage and turns the cellulose found in toilet paper and fecal matter into clean recycled paper.  Over the past few years paper created from human sewage has been used in a variety of products, including envelopes with no complaint (or odors)!

ACT is in negotiations with waste water treatment facilities in the United States and Europe to collect their sludge for paper recovery. This will drastically reduce the number of virgin trees cut down.

According to their website, the company’s  proprietary bio-solids recycling process produces more than just paper. The recycling process creates a variety of renewable energy products under the brand name Recyllose. These include combustibles for power plants, feedstock for cellulosic ethanol production and pulp products for the paper industry.

The same ick-factor existed when elephant poo paper first came out and now it is all a rage, and is seen as an artistic alternative to normal paper. Honestly, if you look at it and even smell it, it is no different from other kinds of paper. How different is human poo from elephant poo? It’s all a matter of perspective.

Human poo paper isn’t available to purchase yet. In the meantime though, purchase panda poo paper and save a tree or two.

by Shannon

The War on Poop – Toilet Hackers Flush With Success After First Sanitation Hackathon

By | Health, Oh Shit! | 3 Comments

As I’ve stated previously, new ideas and innovative solutions are critical to address the 2.5 billion people who lack access to proper sanitation. Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills more than 4,000 children a day and results in billions of dollars in economic losses to developing countries. Given that more people have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet or latrine, Read More

Beyond Flushes: Pushing for Poop Power

By | Health, Oh Shit! | No Comments

November 19th marked World Toilet Day, an international day of action to break the toilet taboo and draw attention to the global sanitation challenge. Everyone poops, but sanitation is not a sexy issue and is taboo to talk about in a lot of contexts. If it does come up in conversation, it is usually with the same awkward unwieldiness that is associated with other unmentionable and uncomfortable conversation topics, like embarrassing sex noises.

In the spirit of toilet day and Read More

by WarmSleepy

Leaks, Sludge and Untreated Flushes, Oh My

By | Health, Oh Shit! | 5 Comments

Reports of America’s antiquated infrastructure are not new, but since much of the aging drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure is underground the problem remains mostly unnoticed and forgotten. As officials scramble to clean up the raw sewage and industrial waste that flooded the waterways surrounding New York City in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, we are harshly reminded of the public and environmental health threat posed by the eroding pipes and outdated systems. Read More

Where Are the Toilets, Baltimore?

By | Health, Oh Shit! | 6 Comments

November 19th marks World Toilet Day – a day designated to raise global awareness of the struggle that 2.6 billion people face every day without access to proper, clean sanitation. While strolling through Baltimore a few days ago in search of a toilet, I had a “shitpiphany” and was reminded that toilet struggles are not struggles confined to the developing world.

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Manual Scavengers: AKA Shit Removers

By | Health, Oh Shit! | No Comments

(Photo: Mohammed Yousuf)

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to get in and get dirty to spark conversation about how conditions such as where people live, learn, work and play lead to fundamental inequities in how healthy some people are in comparison to others. I have decided to bypass digging in and dive straight into excreta. I’m talking about poop. Because, holy crap, there’s a lot of shit to talk about.

This week, as I was perusing content for my post, I stumbled upon “Lesser Humans,” a documentary by Stalin K about “manual scavenging.” Have you heard of this? It’s the term used in India for the manual handling and removal of human excreta (i.e. shit) and it was completely shocking and unknown to me. The video is almost ten years old, and is still powerful, as the practice is still happening today.

Although legally banned through various laws and provisions of India’s constitution, this degrading and inhumane practice still exists both in urban and rural areas throughout India. According to the 2011 Census of India, there are still over 2.6 million dry latrines in the country where the human shit is manually cleaned up by humans. Apart from these, there are over 1.3 million toilets where the human excreta is flushed into open drains, through toilets that are cleaned by human beings who strip down into their underwear and are physically lowered into the sewers to manually haul out the shit. Watch the video if you don’t believe me.

This degrarding work falls to Dalits, the world’s biggest minority. They comprise about sixteen percent of the Indian population, roughly 170 million people.  The way I see it, untouchability is the biggest ongoing human rights violation that the world knows nothing about. Imagine being raised to believe that the only job you were capable of or suitable to perform was handling other people’s shit – or worse, being immersed in it. Imagine what that would do to your mental well-being. Now imagine doing it and what that would do to your health.

Shit removers are not leading long, healthy, happy, lives. This disparity is part of a systemically ingrained system. And no one is talking about it because no one knows. Spread the word and help stop this shit.

(Tune in next time – we’ll be talking about the World Toilet Summit.)