BRATTLEBORO — Nov. 19 was a day to give thanks if you have a toilet.
More than two billion people worldwide lack access to toilet facilities, even rudimentary ones such as outhouses and pit latrines. They have nothing.
The result: open defecation, both in rural settings and in urban slums throughout the world. Half the hospital beds in developing countries are occupied by patients suffering from diseases stemming from contamination of their water.
Indeed, the United Nations' World Water Assessment Program and Water.org say poor sanitation kills a child somewhere on the planet every 20 seconds. That's down from 2001, when Jack Sim of Singapore decided to do what he could to reduce the number to zero, but it underscores all the same the severity of the problem.
In 2001 Sim left his career in construction to found the World Toilet Organization (WTO), which exists to improve sanitation conditions for people globally through advocacy, inventive technology, education, and building local market opportunities.
Sim claimed Nov. 19 as World Toilet Day, and he's been traveling the world to deliver his message. And that's a message the United Nation stands behind: it's adopted Nov. 19 as World Toilet Day.
The date also is of import to the Rich Earth Institute (REI), the Brattleboro-based nonprofit research and demonstration organization, founded in 2011 by Abe Noe-Hays and Kim Nace, dedicated to closing the food nutrient cycle.
REI has as its mission advancing and promoting human manure as a resource, and sees itself as a strong natural ally of any effort to improve sanitation - and save lives - worldwide.
To help the World Toilet Organization mark the U.N.'s historic designation, and further its own work on behalf of so many in need, Nace, REI's administrative director, reports she had the pleasure of traveling to New York City to celebrate the designation with grassroots organizers and to meet Sim.
What Vermont can do for the world
REI is known by many in Windham County as “the pee project.” In solidarity with the two billion people who suffer from a lack of sanitation, this grassroots initiative in southern Vermont promotes clean rivers and sustainable sanitation to reclaim the nutrients in urine and return them to the soils here on local farms.
Nace says she's proud to show off the first community-scale urine recycling project in the United States, right here in Windham County: REI's demonstration urine-diverting toilet uses no water, sequestering pathogens in the feces and recapturing urine in a separate tank for storage, transport, sanitation, and application to hay fields.
Nace holds an M.A. in international administration from World Learning and an M.A. in educational leadership from Keene State College. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana and has taught children of all ages.
She coordinated research funded by the MacArthur Foundation, later serving as principal at a school in rural Vermont and at the American International School in Chennai, India.
To learn more, visit www.richearthinstitute.org. To schedule an informal urine-diverting toilet tour with REI, call 802-579-1857.