Quick, what technological advancement is the most important to modern civilization? The printing press? Electricity? Transistors? Wrong, wrong and wrong. The correct answer is the flush toilet, allegedly invented by Sir Tom Crapper. You doubt this? Obviously you have never lived through a typhoid epidemic, or given much thought to what it really takes to remove a pound of human waste per day, each and every day, for the millions of people in New York City. Still think America would have gleaming cities of teaming (sic) millions and all the futuristic wonders urbanization supports without flush toilets and what’s hooked up at the other end?
With your newfound insight, you will now appreciate the quandry examined in this article puiblished a few days ago in New Scientist. The UN has established the laudable goal of halving the number of people in the world who lack clean drinking water and modern sanitation by 2015. That’s a big, big job: allowing for population growth, it means connecting 400,000 people EVERY DAY to a sewer line for the next 12 years. Such an effort would dwarf the Apollo program that was required to send twelve men to the surface of the moon. “Conventional sewer systems are just not the right answer,” said Bengt Johansson, of the Swedish International Development Agency. “They are very expensive; they pollute rivers; they use a lot of water for flushing that could be set aside for drinking; and they deprive farm soils of the nutrients in sewage.”
Alternatives? At the ongoing current World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan the shining technological hope is “ecological sanitation”, or EcoSan. This involves composting sewage and is cheap, water efficient and non-polluting. “It is not a second best,” said Johansson. “I have an EcoSan system in my summer house outside Stockholm. It works very well.” The Japan Toilet Association is displaying examples of EcoSan technology in Kyoto. Some are toilets that store and compost the sewage. Some are community systems that separate urine, feces and washing water and recycle them separately, irrigating and fertilising fields. Some even ferment sewage to make biogas for cooking. The 21st century shaping up for Third World countries – or lunar or Martian colonies – perhaps looks a little different than most science-fiction depictions.