Sanitation Updates

Let’s have a show of hands from everyone who loves to clean their toilets.

(Pause.)

Come come, don’t be shy. Raise those hands.

(Longer pause.)

OK, I think we can conclude that cleaning toilets is not high on anyone’s list of Really Fun Things to do.

Then why do we clean our toilets? The answer is obvious: We like clean toilets. If someone drops by for coffee, it’s nice to know the bathroom won’t shame us.

Now let’s try another experiment: Raise your hand if you can tell me who is more likely to clean those toilets – a man or a woman?

(Pause while the writer reels back to avoid all the upraised hands.)

OK, you there in the blue shirt, what’s your answer? … A woman? Right you are!

It’s true that women do most of the dirty chores in a house. No matter how liberated we are, it’s a fact that women do more housework.

Facts are funny things. You can rail and scream and fight, but facts don’t change. Women do more housework.

Why? Because we like our toilets clean. We might complain about it, but we prefer clean toilets to dirty ones.

Read More - WorldNetDaily

BY CHRISTINE KRALY. ckraly@nwitimes.com, 219.662.5335 | Sunday, April 20, 2008

In addition to the industrial complexes dotting the lakefront, municipal sanitation sites also expel millions of pounds of chemicals and treated wastewater into the Lake Michigan basin every year.
And some Calumet Region and Chicago-area municipalities are allowed to discharge far greater volumes of pollutants into the lake and its waterways than the more criticized industries, an eight-month Times investigation of Lake Michigan pollution shows. (…)

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By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, Published: April 15, 2008

On a Sunday in July 1832, a fearful and somber crowd of New Yorkers gathered in City Hall Park for more bad news. The epidemic of cholera, cause unknown and prognosis dire, had reached its peak.    (…)        The epidemic left 3,515 dead out of a population of 250,000. (The equivalent death toll in today’s city of eight million would exceed 100,000.) The dreadful time is recalled in art, maps, death tallies and other artifacts in an exhibition, “Plague in Gotham! Cholera in Nineteenth-Century New York,” at the New-York Historical Society. The show will run through June 28.               (…)

Science and medicine advanced more slowly in the 19th century. It was 1883 before the bacterium Vibrio cholerae was discovered to be the agent causing the gastrointestinal disease. But a turning point in prevention came in 1854, when a London physician, Dr. John Snow, established the connection between contaminated water and cholera (…)

Read more The New York Times

Karen Flanagan and her neighbors take pride in their toilets, but not the porcelain thrones in the bathrooms of their homes. Flanagan lives in northwest Austin in a neighborhood off Duval and 183 and if you take a ride through the neighborhood you’ll notice decorated toilets in more than a dozen yards.
Laura Arbilla’s yard is one of them.

“This really makes a good planter. We are recycling a toilet and
they have good drainage,” Arbilla said.

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More than 20 years ago, a handful of women proved you don’t have to be a man to be part of New York’s Strongest.

They were the first female sanitation workers to jump on the trucks and haul the city’s trash.

But women have been helping the Sanitation Department do its job for years.

This Friday, sanitation officials will honor 85 women who work in the department, including many with 25, 30 and 35 years of service.

Read More - Daily News

DENVER, March 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The American Water Works
Association (AWWA), the authoritative resource on safe water, today joined
the United Nations, Water for People and water advocates throughout the
world in recognizing World Water Day, observed March 22, 2008.

The theme for World Water Day 2008 is “Sanitation Matters.” This year’s
theme highlights the fact that “adequate sanitation to protect health is
considered a fundamental human right.” Unfortunately, for roughly half the
developing world, safe and reliable water is not accessible. The result is
the daily tragedy of waterborne disease, which claims thousands of lives
each day.

“Safe water and sanitation are vital to human health and are critical
for the stability of nations around the globe,” said AWWA Executive
Director Gary Zimmerman. “In North America, clean water is often taken for
granted, but World Water Day creates an opportunity to think about the
extraordinary value of our precious water supplies and advanced water
treatment and delivery systems.

Read More - PR Newswire

OTTAWA, March 20 /CNW Telbec/ - On the eve of World Water Day (March 22), a coalition of Canadian organizations concerned about the global sanitation
crisis is calling on the Canadian government to make investment in sanitation
and water a foreign aid priority. In an open letter sent to Minister of
International Cooperation Beverley Oda, Sanitation & Water Action Network
(SWAN) Canada called for increased investment in sanitation as a way to save
lives, strengthen economies, and fight poverty around the globe.

Read More - Newswire

Congressman Donald M. Payne, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, today introduced a concurrent resolution supporting the United Nations’ declaration of 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation.

…

Representative Payne affirmed, “Sanitation is the foundation of health, dignity and progress. Economic and social development are its offshoot. It affects everything from a girl’s ability to go to school to work productivity. Every dollar invested in sanitation translates to an average of $7.00 in economic benefit in developing countries.”

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WASHINGTON, Mar 13 (OneWorld) - Activists working to improve lives and livelihoods around the world gathered in the United States capital Wednesday to launch a new initiative to bring water and sanitation facilities to schools that currently lack them.

The WASH-in-Schools initiative aims to bring clean drinking water, toilet facilities, and hygiene education to 1,000 schools in developing countries during its first phase.

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