World toilet summit begins in China

BEIJING - Laugh all you want, say public hygiene experts at the World Toilet Summit, but the importance of having loos you can use is no joke.

The three-day event, which began Wednesday in Beijing, is an international commode conference with a mission: the globalization of presentable latrines.

"People are saying 'We want good toilets!' because toilets are a basic human right and that basic human right has been neglected," said Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, a co-sponsor of the summit. "The world deserves better toilets."

Some 150 scholars, toilet designers and environmentalists from 19 countries gathered to exchange ideas on topics such as the latest toilet technologies, lavatory management tips and the relationship between toilets and tourism development.

With a packed schedule of slide shows, lectures and question-and-answer sessions, there was very little room for potty humor.

"You can laugh at it for a short time," said Sim, whose group is based in the hyper-clean island nation of Singapore. "But after a few seconds, you should start to pay serious attention to the subject because you have been ignoring the toilet subject for too long and it's doing something to your body, to your life quality, to your social graciousness."

The convention is in its fourth year, with Singapore, Seoul and Taipei as previous hosts. Participants this year came from countries as far flung as Finland, Japan and the United States.

China, known for its fetid public toilets that often are little more than open trenches, is eager to show off its advances in preparing for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Delegates to the conference are to be taken on a tour of new and renovated public toilets around the Chinese capital.

Photos of showcase lavatories were also displayed at the conference, from a ladybug-shaped one in a public garden to another modeled after a grass hut in a wildlife park. Facilities with baby-changing stations, wheelchair ramps and gleaming white ceramic urinals were also featured.

"New public toilets are an important symbol to demonstrate the development of the city," said Liang Guangsheng, deputy director of Beijing's Municipal Administrative Committee.

In the past three years, Beijing has spent 238 million yuan (US$29 million, euro 23 million) on building or renovating 747 restrooms at tourist spots, according to the city government.

"The toilets are sanitary, convenient and private," Yu Changjiang, director general of the city's tourism bureau said. The city also aims to make them suitable for users of all ages, for the disabled, and energy and water-efficient.

"People settle for good food, good clothes and good living conditions without paying enough attention to the toilet," Yu said. "Toilet issues are a very important symbol of people's quality of life."

The city has come up with a rating system of one to four stars for its public wash rooms, reportedly based on such criteria as granite floors, remote-sensor flushes, automatic hand-driers and piped-in music.

The capital now has 88 four-star lavatories, 161 that qualify for three stars, 312 for two and 110 for one. Countless others, are perhaps best not mentioned.

Maintenance is as important as construction, said Simon Tay, one of the speakers at the summit.

"It's something that China needs to think about," said Tay, chairman of Singapore's National Environment Agency, a government organization. "I hate the word luxury toilet because really good toilets should be an everyday common thing. It doesn't have to look like the Shangri-La toilet ... in order for it to be something that we can be proud of."

Wash hands after World Toilet Day

By DAVE BARRY
Published Sunday, November 7, 2004

I am often criticized for writing immature "bathroom" humor and not enough about important topics. So today I’m going to write about a major international event that is going to take place Nov. 17-19 in Beijing, China: The World Toilet Summit.

I am not making up the World Toilet Summit. It was brought to my attention by alert reader Marc Howell, who alerted me to the World Toilet Organization, a group dedicated to improving the world’s public toilets, with a Web site at worldtoilet.org - "org" is a sound made by many of the world’s public toilets.

This site says that the World Toilet Summit is a gathering of "the KEY DECISION MAKERS, KEY OFFICIALS and the MOVERS AND SHAKERS" of the international toilet industry. The Beijing host committee, which includes an official named - I am still not making any of this up - "Stone Wang," says the summit will feature workshops on "hot topics" in the toilet industry. For example, Seok-Nam Gang of the Korea Clean Toilet Association will present "Toilets As Tourism Attraction."

Other hot topics include "Toilets as Marketing Tools" and "Generating Revenue Through Advertisements in Good Toilets." There also will be a presentation of the "Loo of the Year Awards," a tour of "toilets and related facilities in Beijing" and a "dinner show."

I think the World Toilet Summit is a great idea because most of the world’s public toilets, in a word, stink. I’m not saying the United States is perfect in this department. We’ve made some serious mistakes, the worst being the introduction of "low-flow" toilets, which clog when asked to handle anything larger than, say, a molecule.

Also, I am not a fan of those high-tech public toilets with the automatic sensors that either (a) become overexcited and flush themselves 37 times before you even sit down or (b) lapse into a coma, so that when you’re done you find yourself waving your arms like a lunatic and loudly remarking "Well, I’m done!" in an effort to revive your toilet so it will flush and you can leave while the people waiting the stall wonder what kind of sick, perverted thing you are doing in there.

Also - and I cannot stress this too much - public restrooms should be clearly marked with signs that say "MEN" or "WOMEN." If there have to be symbols instead of words, the man symbol should clearly be a man, and the woman symbol should clearly be a woman wearing a giant, unattractive "A-line" style skirt. Theme restaurants should not use cutesy names like "Sheilas," "Caballeros," "Colleens," "Galoots," etc.; nor should they use ambiguous drawings that can be misunderstood in dim lighting by a person who has had a couple of vodka gimlets and thus finds himself barging into the ladies’ room, not that I have done this more than twice.

But for all the flaws of our public toilets, they stand head - har! - and shoulders above those of much of the rest of the world. In parts of Europe, when you enter a public restroom, you often find yourself face to face with some hideous, dripping slime-covered contraption originally built by Vikings out of petrified mastodon bones. And as if that’s not scary enough, sometimes there’s a lurking "attendant" who might belong to a completely different gender from yourself and who expects you to tip her even though it’s clear that neither she nor anybody else has ever actually cleaned the restroom, as evidenced by the presence of bacteria the size of wolverines.

But at least your European restroom contains some form of toilet. In other parts of the world, all you find is a hole in the floor, as if the toilet has been stolen by commode rustlers. Sometimes there isn’t even a hole. Once, while visiting a zoo in China, I asked where the restroom was, and I was directed to: a wall. On one side of this wall were large exotic animals doing their business right out in the open; on the other side were zoo visitors doing exactly the same thing. To this day, unfortunately, this is the image that comes to my mind whenever I hear the words "Great Wall of China."

So I applaud the World Toilet Organization for its efforts to improve the world’s public toilets. I think this concept could be used in tourism advertising: "KOREA - Come for the history; stay for the public toilets." You probably can’t attend the summit, but you can take part in - I am still not making this up - World Toilet Day. This year, it’s Nov. 19. Let’s all take a few moments to observe this very special occasion.

And then let’s wash our hands.

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