The Big Necessity (43 page)

Dirty because it is out of place
“Dirt then, is never an isolated, unique event. Where there is dirt, there is system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, insofar as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.” Mary Douglas,
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
(London: Routledge, 2006), p. 44.

The ultimate
lèse-majesté John Berger, “Muck and Its Entanglements,”
Harper's Magazine
, May 1989, pp. 60–61.

The Bangladesh program
An interesting account of Mosmoil's story is told in a film by the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), narrated by the Indian actor Roshan Seth, which reenacts the CLTS process using the real villagers of Mosmoil. WSP,
Awakening: The Story of Total Sanitation in Bangladesh
, is available online at
http://www.wsp.org/filez/video/4162007110732_AwakeningPart1.wmv
.

Bare bottoms doing what they must
Gourisankar Ghosh, former chief of the WSSCC, told me that the reason former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi became interested in sanitation was because he took a Delhi-Bombay fast train one morning and happened to look out the window. V. S. Naipaul, who famously called India “the turd world,” wrote that open defecation was so endemic because “it is said that the peasant, Muslim or Hindu, suffers from claustrophobia if he has to use an enclosed latrine.” Naipaul,
Area of Darkness
, p. 70.

A thousand tigers
WSSCC,
Listening
, p. 41.

Gifting latrine slabs to brides
WSP,
Awakening: The Story of Total Sanitation in Bangladesh
.

9. IN THE CITIES

The hydraulic city
Matthew Gandy, “Water, Sanitation and the Modern City: Colonial and Post-Colonial Experiences in Lagos and Mumbai,” Human Development Report Occasional Paper, 2006, p. 4.

Operational definition
United Nations Human Settlement Program (UN-HABITAT), “The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements,” 2003, p. 12.

Now an urban species
The United Nations Population Division expected the milestone to have been reached in 2005; Worldwatch's State of the World 2007 report concluded it would happen in 2008. David Whitehouse, “Half of Humanity Set to Go Urban,” BBC News, May 19, 2005; “State of the World 2007: Notable Trends,” Worldwatch news release, January 10, 2007.

Nearly a billion slum dwellers
UN-HABITAT, “Challenge of Slums,”p. xxv.

Africa's slum-dwelling population
John Vidal, “Cities Are Now the Frontline of Poverty,”
Guardian
, February 2, 2005.

Kenya's population growth
Mike Davis,
Planet of Slums
(London: Verso, 2006), pp. 18, 24.

One hundred thousand people move to slums
“The Growth of Cities: Monsters Stir,” IRIN (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), March 15, 2008.

$1.4 billion a year
Dan McDougall, “Waste Not, Want Not in the £700M a Year Slum,”
Observer
, March 4, 2007.

Sewers cost five times more
David Nilsson, “A Heritage of Unsustainability? Reviewing the Origin of the Large-Scale Water and Sanitation System in Kampala, Uganda,”
Environment and Urbanization
18 (2006): 380.

Lain in shallower trenches
Duncan Mara, “Health and Sanitation in the Developing World,” paper delivered at the World Toilet Summit, Singapore, November 19–21, 2001,
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~cen6ddm/papers2000-2005.html
.

The authority generally provided trunk sewers
The OPP method also saves money. Residents invested 90 million rupees ($1.4 million) to build their neighborhood sanitation systems; it's estimated the same level of service
would have cost local government $10.5 million. Arif Hasan, “Orangi Pilot Project: The Expansion of Work Beyond Orangi and the Mapping of Informal Settlements and Infrastructure,”
Environment and Urbanization
18/2 (2006): 451–80.

Repeated in forty-two other Karachi slums
United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2006 “Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 121.

Foolish to pass from one distortion
Jeremy Seabrook, quoted in Davis,
Planet of Slums
, p. 70.

SPARC's business is booming
A precise figure of SPARC's reach is difficult, but the projects in Mumbai and Pune already serve a quarter of a million people. Personal communication with David Satterthwaite, International Institute for Environment and Development, London, April 2008.

96 percent of Tanzanians
WHO/UNICEF, “Meeting the MDG Drinking Water and Sanitation Target,” 2006, p. 43.

Fecal contamination of users
David Satterthwaite and Gordon McGranahan, “Overview of the Global Sanitation Problem,” Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper No. 12 (New York: UNDP, 2006), p. 8.

It was cholera that made headlines
Steven Shapin, “Sick City,”
The New Yorker
, November 6, 2006.

Melbourne uses waste stabilization ponds
Melbourne Water operates the Western Treatment Plant at Werribee, which treats 485 million liters a day, provided by 1.6 million people. Further information can be found on the extensive Web site of Professor Duncan Mara, a world authority on ponds. See
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~cen6ddm/
.

Less than half a cent per person
Marion W. Jenkins and Steven Sugden, “Rethinking Sanitation: Lessons and Innovation for Sustainability and Success in the New Millennium,” Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper No. 27 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2006), p. 25.

U.S. patent 6,242,489
Available at
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/
.

Or as a taggant
The Sunshine Project, Backgrounder Series #8, July 2001,
http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/bk/bk8en.html
.

John Snow never patented
Peter Vinten-Johansen,
Cholera, Chloroform and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 113.

If toilets were like mobile phones
Marion W. Jenkins and Steven Sugden, “Rethinking Sanitation—Lessons and Innovation for Sustainability and
Success in the New Millennium,” Human Development Report Sanitation Thematic Paper 2006, p. 10.

A toilet shop was a great idea
Steadman and Associates, “Social Marketing for Urban Sanitation Pilot Survey in Keko Mwanga B,” (Dar-es-Salaam: Steadman & Associates (T) Ltd., 2003).

Punishing running costs
Personal communication with Steven Sugden, April 2008.

10. THE END

$23.4 million toilet
“An Astronomical Potty,”
Time
, January 25, 1993.

Its precious fabrics
Tom McNichol, “The Big Gulp,”
Wired
, August 2005.

$40,000 to transport each gallon
Ibid.

A secondhand Russian toilet
“NASA Buys $19 Million Russian Toilet System for International Space Station,”
International Herald Tribune
, July 5, 2007.

Chronically short of water
All water facts in this paragraph are taken from Robin Clarke and Jannet King,
The Atlas of Water: Mapping the World's Most Critical Resource
(London: Earthscan, 2004), p. 19.

One cubic meter of wastewater
Ibid., p. 11.

Bolted onto every sewage plant
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “From the Toilet to the Tap,” November 9, 2006, transcript available at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1785041.htm
.

Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority
Personal communication with Robert Bastian, EPA Office of Wastewater Management, April 2007.

French minister of the environment
“Eau: Une pub source de polémique,” TF1, January 17, 2007, transcript available at
http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/sciences/environnement/0,,3381854,00-eau-pub-source-polemique-.html
.

$2.17 billion of only one brand
Johnny Davis, “Would Madam Care to Taste the Cloud Juice?”
Guardian
, December 2, 2007.

Out of an ordinary tap
“Pepsi says Aquafina is tap water,” CNN, July 27, 2007;
http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/27/news/companies/pepsi_coke/
. A four-year study by the Natural Resources Defense Council into America's bottled water industry found that a quarter of bottled “mineral” waters are in fact municipal tap water. Erik D. Olson, “Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?” Natural Resources Defense Council, February 1999, available at
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp
.

The consumer just doesn't seem to care
Davis, “Would Madam Care to Taste.”

Leapfrog over dinosaur technologies
Stephen Dale, “Regenerative Solutions for Managing Community-Generated Organic Waste,”
Reports
(magazine
of the International Development Research Center), February 4, 2000, available at
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-5574-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
.

11.5 watts
Graham Lawton, “Pee-Cycling,”
New Scientist
, December 20, 2006.

A carbon impact
“Future Water: The Government's Water Strategy for England” (HM Government, 2008), p. 6.

Can't be good
Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza, and Justin Pritchard, “AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water,” Associated Press, March 9, 2008.

David Stuckey
“Submerged Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor Awarded,”
Water and Wastewater Newsletter
10/329 (March 17, 2008).

One toilet per second
Personal communication with Arno Rosemarin, Swedish Environment Institute, November 2006.

Anything but stable
WHO, “World Health Report 2007: A Safer Future: Global Public Health Security in the 21st Century” (Geneva: WHO Press, 2007), p. vi.

11 percent of those died
WHO, “World Health Report 2007,” p. 39.

A disease of prosperous urban centers
Ibid., p. 40.

Planners and Searchers
William Easterly,
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

The excuse of ignorance
Harold Farnsworth Gray, “Sewerage in Ancient and Modern Times,”
Sewage Works Journal
12/5 (September 1940): 946.

 

 

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. London: Earthscan, 2008.

Chadwick, Edwin.
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. London: Longmans & Co., 1885.

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Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character Through Folklore
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Bogs, Baths and Basins: The Story of Domestic Sanitation
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Glassford, Charles F. O.
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Lewin, Ralph A.
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Coprophilia, or a Speck of Dirt
. London: Cassell, 1971.

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