June 30, 2003
Most folk over age 40 remember the outhouse, fondly dubbed the "little shack out back" when visiting relatives in the countryside. Lessons in the intricacies of spider webs could be learned in one summer. Blue-bottomed flies and droning mosquitoes were the only ones not afraid to keep you company. Not even all the stories about being able to check out the latest fishing gear in the Sears catalogue could make the average outhouse any more inviting. Too polite to hurt Auntie Nell’s feelings, you often surreptitiously headed for the bushes.
The closest today’s youth come to the little shack out back is visiting Johnny-on-the-spots for nature calls during rock concerts.
Only loopy radical environmentalists would try to resurrect the outhouse and make it a permanent part of contemporary life.
According to Marc Morano, of CNSNews.com, taking us back to the outhouse is precisely where the environmentalists are leading us.
"A growing number of environmentalists are now advocating the expanded use of compost or dry toilets worldwide to combat what they see as an international water crisis," says Morano.
As far as H20 is concerned, the flush toilet cannot even be blamed for significant water usage, and factually accounts for only five to 10 percent of total usage. Agricultural use of water accounts for about 70 percent of worldwide water usage, while industry accounts for about 23 percent.
But you can’t expect today’s environmentalists to go after agricultural use. Water is needed there to irrigate their lucrative organic gardens and fields.
The struggling poor in developing nations look to the flush toilet in much the way some North Americans look through telescopes at the stars.
"Proponents of dry toilets, set to convene at the first annual international Dry Toilet 2003 conference in Tampere, Finland, August 20-23, warn of "environmental disaster" if developing nations aspire to flush toilets so prevalent in the industrialized world," Morano warns us.
Notice how environmentalists with big issues never meet in the Bronx? Travelling from village to village is beyond the means of many in developing nations. The price of an airline ticket and jetting off on environmental-friendly jumbo jets is well within the means of latter-day save-the-world environmentalists.
Oh well, when United Nations delegates traveled to last summer’s Johannesburg summit, they dined on pails of caviar, lobster, and sirloin steak smack in the middle of starving Africa.
Says Morano: "Critics of the upcoming conference say the widespread use of dry toilets in the developing world is nothing more than a "celebration of primitivism," and call the flush toilet the "greatest public health advance in the modern era."
A waterless dry toilet, which generally costs about $2,000, collects human urine and feces and requires emptying by humans on a regular basis. Advocates claim the resulting matter can then be composted and used as fertilizer for food crops.
Last winter, some 75,000 tonnes of sewer solids from the Greater Toronto Area were trucked to a landfill in Michigan. With the winter freeze long over, spraying of the sewage on farm fields in the Province of Ontario has begun.
The practice of fertilizing farmers’ fields with "biosolids" (human sludge) is legal and has been going on in Ontario and elsewhere for a number of years.
Last summer, a medical officer of health signed papers indicating that the illness of a baby he was treating was due to living within close range of a field that had been fertilized with biosolids.
That was before the outbreak of SARS.
"The SARS virus could be present in the sludge and may infect people who live near sludge-field spreads," said Maureen O'Reilly of Sierra Club of Canada.
"Disease can be tracked into homes by pets. Viruses may get into groundwater or be inhaled by people who live close to these sludge-spread farms."
Larry Warnberg, a featured speaker at the upcoming August conference, said China and other developing world nations cannot aspire to mimic the U.S. and Europe’s reliance on modern flush toilets and the resultant sewage infrastructure.
"That is a wrong turn, and it will just be an environmental disaster. The same is true in Brazil and Africa. There are better choices," Warnberg told CNSNews.com. Warnberg, who will speak to the conference about Reducing Regulatory Barriers to Composting Toilets, also markets manuals on how to build a do-it-yourself dry toilet.
Warnberg calls his toilet designs S.C.A.T., for Solar Composting Advance Toilet.
Supply and demand is not exactly knocking down Larry's door.
Ceri Dingle, of the British-based charitable education group Worldwrite, which focuses on development issues and sponsors international student exchange programs, has gauged the popularity of the flush toilet.
"Thirteen percent of Africans have a sewage connection; that is, a flushing toilet leading to a sewage system, while for North America, the figure is 100 percent and Europe 92 percent," said Dingle. "This is what the developing world aspires to, not make do and mend."
Dingle’s group sponsored a campaign on June 7 that included a march by "volunteers from developing countries, who want their desire for piped water, and modern facilities flushing loos (toilets,) and modern facilities taken seriously."
Environmental activists headed for Finland may have inadvertently created the need for a new clarion call in sloganeering: Save Humanity from Environmentalism.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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