Happy World Toilet Day! No, that’s not a joke. Nov. 19 is World Toilet Day — declared by the United Nations in 2001 to spotlight the fact that 3.4 billion people lack “safely managed sanitation” and more than 300 million practice open defecation.
A toilet alone isn’t the solution. Without an effective, sanitary system to remove and treat waste, a toilet is merely a porcelain throne. “What the world needs is not toilets,” says Dr. Stephen Luby, professor of medicine at Stanford and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. “Low-income communities need effective sewers and sanitation that separate their water and food from the human fecal stream.”
On visits to communities such as parts of Nairobi, Kenya, the reality is stark: gutters clogged with trash and floating diapers, and piles of so-called “flying toilets” — plastic bags used for defecation and tossed outside. Waste disposal challenges are hardly new; historical cities once relied on throwing refuse out of windows. But with more than 7 billion people on Earth, sewage now demands “remarkable engineering,” Luby says. Those systems are often out of sight and out of mind — and costly. In the U.S., for example, about 15,000 liters of water per person per year are used just to transport sewage to treatment plants.
Building sanitation infrastructure requires huge investment, which is especially difficult in low-income areas. Experts and organizations are exploring alternatives and incremental solutions. Luby suggests composting or “dry sanitation” systems — methods that can safely break down fecal matter into compost with simple inputs like sawdust and properly designed containers to vent odors.
UNICEF sanitation team lead Ann Thomas notes another pressure: climate change. The 2025 World Toilet Day theme, “sanitation in a changing world,” reflects concerns that increased rainfall and flooding overload combined sewer systems, causing untreated sewage to spill into rivers — even in major cities like New York. Funding and adaptation are needed to make systems resilient.
Thomas also points to practical household-level approaches being used in countries like India, where the twin-pit latrine is common. Two pits are used alternately; when one fills, a household switches to the other and allows time for pathogens to die off in the full pit, making its contents safe to handle later and usable as compost.
What about the name? Thomas says she likes “World Toilet Day” because the word toilet breaks the taboo and is a little funny, helping draw attention. “World Sanitation Day” doesn’t quite have the same ring. Luby quips that he would support “World Poop Day.” Thomas laughs at the idea and jokes it could be considered for the future, but for now she thinks the current name “walks the line between not being offensive and being fun.”
