The Big Necessity (40 page)

The cheapest cleaning option
In the latest railway budget, Indian Railways did however allocate $1 billion to install three types of toilet—controlled discharge (to be released only when the train is going more than 18 miles an hour), biodegradable, and vacuum-retention—in 36,000 railway coaches. The reason for this largesse was that the 300,000 liters of human excreta gushing from India's trains are rapidly corroding the rails. No mention was made of scavengers. Rahul Bedi, “India to Invest Millions in ‘Green' Train Toilets,”
Daily Telegraph
, March 4, 2008.

A high court in Nizamabad
Bezwada Wilson, “He Cleaned Up the System,”
Tehelka
, October 7, 2006.

The total eradication of manual scavenging
“India Plans New System to Rehabilitate Scavengers,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 30, 2007.

Their substance was subject enough
Adrian Searle, “Absolute Excrement,”
Guardian
, December 4, 2007.

He publicly cleaned his own
“There was no limit to insanitation. . . . There were only a few latrines, and the recollection of their stink still oppresses me. I pointed it out to the volunteers. They said point blank, ‘That is not our work, it is the scavenger's work.' I asked for a broom. The man stared at me in wonder. I procured one and cleaned the latrine. But that was for myself. The rush was so great, and the latrines so few, that they needed frequent cleaning, but that was more than I could do. . . . And the others did not seem to mind the stench and the dirt.” M. K. Gandhi,
An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927, repr. 2006), pp. 206–7.

Evacuation is as necessary as eating
“Everyone must be his own scavenger. . . . I have felt for years that there must be something radically wrong, where scavenging has been made the concern of [a] separate class in society.” M. K. Gandhi,
Harijan
, vol. 18, October 30, 1954.

Inequality was the soul of Hinduism
B. R. Ambedkar,
Writings and Speeches
(Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1987), vol. 3, p. 66.

Quite an achievement of the imagination
Virginia Smith,
Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 29.

The utmost violation of human rights
Bindeshwar Pathak, “Operation, Impact and Financing of Sulabh,” Occasional Paper for the Human Development Report 2006, p. 4.

232 of India's 5,233 towns
Ibid.

The kind you get from chronic diarrhea
For more on Delhi's sewage and the dying Yamuna, see
Fecal Attraction: The Political Economy of Defecation
, a film by Pradip Saha, Center for Science and the Environment, New Delhi, 2006, available from
http://csestore.cse.org.in
.

A pioneering composter
Gandhi gets most of the credit, but India has a proud history of pioneering sanitation activists and composters, including Appa Saheb Patwardhan, whose name lives on in a foundation set up by another pioneering sanitation activist, Dr. S. V. Mapuskar, who has installed 75 human waste biogas digesters in his hometown of Dehu, near Pune, making it unique. S. P. Singh,
Sulabh Sanitation Movement: Vision-2000 Plus
(New Delhi: Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, 2005), p. 306.

Poor people in Uganda
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2006, “Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 51.

The eminence of Faraday
S. P. Singh,
Sulabh Sanitation Movement
, p. iii.

Well-known businessmen readily agree
Pathak,
Operation, Impact and Financing
, p. 11.

Half a million Indians
WSSCC,
Listening
, p. 37.

A candle in the dark:
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, “Sanitation Is a Business” (Bern, Switzerland: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, 2004), p. 18.

5. CHINA'S BIOGAS BOOM

Their soils turned to dust
David Montgomery,
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), p. 181. The agricultural scientist Franklin Hiram King, who spent nine months traveling through China and Japan in 1909, was as impressed by Asia's sensible use of all waste as he was scornful of the West's waste of it. He concluded that “the people of the United States and of Europe are pouring into the sea, lakes or rivers and into the underground waters from 5,794,300 to 12,000,000 pounds of nitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000 pounds of potassium; and 777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus per million of adult population annually, and this waste we esteem one of the great achievements of our civilization.” F. H. King,
Farmers of Forty Centuries
(1911; Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, repr. 2004), p. 63.

Threw her into the toilet to die Cesuo wenhua manlun
(General essays on toilet culture), ed. Feng Shufei, Zhang Yiguo, and Zhang Dongsu (Shanghai: Tongji University Press, 2005), pp. 49–50.

Stinky Shit Egg
Shanghai night soil-collector-turned-competitive-bicyclist Chen Qiaozhu told that passersby would see her and “pooh-pooh her, plug their noses, and spit,” to which Chen would fiercely reply, “Look! If we stopped doing this work for just three days, Shanghai would turn into Stinkytown!” Night-soil collector heroes were politically useful because “only in a truly liberated society could a collector and carrier of human waste be given the honor of making an address in the hallowed Great Hall of the People.” Andrew Morris, “‘Fight for Fertilizer!' Excrement, Public Health and Mobilization in New China,”
Journal of Unconventional History
6/3 (Spring 1995): 64.

Seas of Shit, Mountains of Fertilizer
Ibid., pp. 61–62.

15.4 million rural households
Personal communication with officials at the Institute of Biogas (BIOMA), Chengdu, China.

The excreta of genocidal murderers
Biogas digesters are now installed in six Rwandan prisons. Using biogas instead of wood for energy has cut wood use by 60 percent and saved £1 million in fuel costs. The odor-free compost that results from biogas has also done wonders for the prison gardens. BBC News, “Rwanda Award for ‘Sewage' Cooking,” June 30, 2005.

A sizable international prize
Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, “Ashden Awards Case Study, Shaanxi Mothers,” 2006,
http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/shaanxi
.

Increased vegetable yields
J. Paul Henderson, “Anaerobic Digestion in Rural China,”
City Farmer
, Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture, available from
http://www.cityfarmer.org/biogasPaul.html
.

885 square feet of land
Heinz-Peter Mang, presentation at the World Toilet Summit, Moscow, September 2006.

Six hours' worth of a 60–100 watt bulb
Practical Action, “Biogas and Liquid Biofuels Technical Brief,” p. 3, available at
http://practicalaction.org/?id-biogas_expertise
.

2.3 tons of wood
Henderson, “Anaerobic Digestion.”

Count Alessandro Volta
“The appearance of flickering lights emerging from below the surface of swamps was noted by Pliny and Van Helmont recorded the emanation of an inflammable gas from decaying organic matter in the 17th Century. Volta is generally recognized as putting methane digestion on a scientific footing.” Uri Marchaim, “Biogas Processes for Sustainable Development” (Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1992), chap. 4.

A leper colony in Bombay
Opinions differ as to whether the Ackworth Leper Colony in Matunga, Bombay, installed its pioneering biogas digester in 1859 or 1896. For 1859, see Paul Harris's informative biogas pages at
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas
. For 1896, see Marchaim, “Biogas Processes.”

66 pounds of feces daily
Henderson, “Anaerobic Digestion.”

Strike for three days
David G. Strand, “Feuds, Fights and Factions: Group Politics in 1920s Beijing,”
Modern China
11/4 (October 1985): 425–27.

Sister Ah Gui, Shit Queen
Hanchao Lu,
Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 194. For a fuller account of China's
fen
business, see King,
Farmers of Forty Centuries
, p. 63.

A million honey buckets
Lu,
Beyond the Neon Lights
, pp. 191–93.

The night-soil man's wooden cart
Emily Prager, “Settling Down in a City in Motion,”
New York Times
, July 19, 2007.

If current rates of exploitation continue
Ingrid Steen, “Phosphorus Availability in the 21st Century: Management of a Non-Renewable Resource,”
Phosphorus & Potassium
217 (September–October 1998): 12.

The problem of sanitation was solved
U.S. Joint Publications Research Service, “Health and Sanitation in Communist China,” Report 96, December 17, 1957, p. 5.

Cost is the biggest obstacle
Marion W. Jenkins, “Who Buys Latrines, Where and Why?” Water and Sanitation Program Field Note (Nairobi, Kenya: Water and Sanitation Program—African Region, 2004), p. 9.

Fossilized Peruvian dung
Raúl Patrucco, Raúl Tello, and Duccio Bonavia, “Parasitological Studies of Coprolites of Pre-Hispanic Peruvian Populations,”
Current Anthropology
24/3 (June 1983): 393–94.

No such thing as a total removal
Matthias Gustavsson, “Biogas—Solution in Search of Its Problem,” Göteborg University Human Ecology Reports Series 1, March 2000. Doctoral dissertation, Göteborg University, Sweden, p. 16.

Over two-thirds of Chinese
By 2030, a billion Chinese will live in cities. Jonathan Woetzel, Janamitra Devan, Luke Jordan, Stefano Negri, and Diana Farrell, “Preparing for China's Urban Billion” (Shanghai: McKinsey Global Institute, 2008), p. 14.

Sufficient dung
Jungfen (Jim) Zhang and Kirk R. Smith, “Household Air Pollution from Coal and Biomass Fuels in China: Measurements, Impacts and Interventions,”
Environmental Health Perspectives
115 (2007): 854.

6. A PUBLIC NECESSITY

Aural privacy
Government standards recommend that background noise be increased to a level of 55db—a decibel level at which loud speech can be understood—to aid embarrassed students. The same report also suggests that urinals be avoided, because their use by boys at puberty is “problematic.” Trough-type urinals can contribute to shy bladder syndrome. Department for Education and Skills, “Standard Specifications, Layouts and Dimensions 3: Toilets in Schools” (London: Department for Education and Skills, 2007), p. 9.

Civil inattention
Alexander Kira,
The Bathroom
(New York: Viking Press, 1966, 1976), p. 204.

Pearls and rubies
Norbert Elias,
The Civilizing Process
(Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), p. 123.

Leaping stags
Paola Chini, “Latrina Romana in Via Garibaldi,” Comune di Roma Assesorato alle Politiche Culturali Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali, available at
http://www2.comune.roma.it/monumentiantichi
.

It costs two sous to do it
“Chacun sait ce qu'il a à faire et il faut payer deux sous.” J. F. C. Blanvillain,
Le Pariseum
, 1807, quoted in Martin Monestier,
Histoire et Bizarreries Sociales des Excréments: Des Origines à Nos Jours
(Paris: Le Cherche-Midi, 1997), p. 147.

Mr. Tinkler
Tinkler won his case, as the judges decided that Wands-worth Board of Works had exceeded its statutory requirement by forcibly installing water closets. John Walter de Longueville Gifford,
Reports of Cases Adjudged in the High Court of Chancery by the Vice-Chancellor Sir John Stuart
(London: Wildy & Sons, 1860), pp. 412–20.

George Jennings's public facilities
Lawrence Wright,
Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water Closet, and of Sundry Habits, Fashions and Accessories of the Toilet, Principally in Great Britain, France and America
(London: Routledge & Kegal Paul, 1960), p. 200.

Paris Métro's new Line 1
These magnificent Art Deco facilities also had a steel staircase decorated with mosaics, mahogany doors and fittings, and copper pipes. Monestier,
Histoire et Bizarreries
, p. 154.

47 percent of London's bathrooms
“Sassy Britannia Will Spend a Giant Penny to Honor Pioneering Public Toilet,” Royal Society of Chemistry news release, August 13, 2002.

Decreased in number by 40 percent
Clara Greed, “The Role of the Public Toilet: Pathogen Transmitter or Health Facilitator?”
Building Service Engineering Research and Technology
27 (May 2006): 127–39.

Run the gamut
Council of the City of New York, “Toilet Trauma: A Survey of Public Restrooms in New York City” (New York: Council of the City of New York, 2001), p. 4.

Public toilets! Has it come to this?
Roger Kimball, Armavirumque,
New Criterion
blog, May 30, 2005;
http://www.newcriterion.com/weblog/2005/05/where-is-hercules-when-you-need-him.html
.

The acceptability of eliminating these substances
Steven Pinker,
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
(London: Allen Lane, 2007), p. 344.

Simon Norris, The Disabled Toilet
Maev Kennedy, “Seaside Squat Is a Room with a Loo,”
Guardian
, April 9, 2007.

Overnight accommodation by Polish migrant workers
The desirable residential toilets in Stamford Hill were later fitted with new locks to deter squatters. Matthew Hickley and Laura Roberts, “The Superloo Where Polish Migrants Are Fighting to Spend the Night for 20p,”
Daily Mail
, May 3, 2007.