World Toilet Day

19 November is World Toilet Day – a day to celebrate the humble, yet vitally important, toilet and to raise awareness of the global sanitation crisis.

Imagine life without a toilet. No toilets in your home or at work, no public toilets, no toilets anywhere. Imagine the mess. Imagine the disease.

WaterAid is working hard to change this, using simple and low cost solutions, and there are many easy and fun ways you can get involved.

Did you know?

• 2.5 billion people do not have somewhere safe, private or hygienic to go to the toilet.
• One gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs.
• The simple act of washing hands with soap and water after going to the toilet can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40%.
• Safe disposal of children's faeces leads to a reduction of nearly 40% in childhood diarrhoea.

Make a donation To mark World Toilet Day, donate to WaterAid with your credit or debit card and help us reach even more people in urgent need of safe sanitation.

Toilet Tax - spend a penny Charge a nominal fee to work colleagues when they use the bathroom. This highlights how on any other day of the year, using the toilet is free - a luxury and right that many in the developing world simply do not have.

turdlywinks Play turdlywinks and get people talking about toilets. The game aims to highlight facts about the global sanitation crisis. It is available to play online here, or you can download it as a board game ( PDF 738Kb).

Tinkle time Put up the Tinkle Test poster ( PDF 100Kb) wherever you can. The toilet door is always a good place. The poster reminds people of both the importance of having a safe, plentiful supply of drinking water and having a safe, clean place to go to the toilet.

To find out more about campaigning for WaterAid, download the full World Toilet Day campaigners' toolkit ( PDF 384Kb)