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World Toilet Summit

Mention the words "public toilet" and you are likely to elicit everything from grins to the first public-toilet joke that comes to mind.

But when you need a public toilet and cannot find one, or, if upon finding one, you are confronted with a wet, smelly mess, good humour is usually displaced by panic, disgust and outrage.

With life in Beijing becoming increasingly sophisticated, with tourist traffic growing by leaps and bounds, and with the city preparing to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the state of the city's public toilets is no joking matter. But for city policy-makers, improving public facilities is a complex issue involving many social, cultural, economic and environmental factors that transcend their mere appearance and use.

So the city, in addition to increasing spending on public facilities, will host the Fourth World Toilet Summit 2004 from November 17 to 19 at the Beijing International Hotel. In connection with the summit, the city also plans to publicize and observe World Toilet Day on November 19 to bring attention to the issue.

Liang Guangsheng, director of the Beijing Municipal Administration Commission, at a press conference held at the Beijing Hotel on November 5 said, "Five years ago tourists complained a lot about toilets at the tourist sites. In response, during the last two and a half years, the Beijing Tourism administration has invested 240 million yuan to build 747 star-level toilets at tourist sites. Complaints have declined.

"In these toilets, there are facilities for disabled and elderly people. Some of the toilets even have air-conditioners and seats. Environmentally friendly toilets and toilets that blend in with the surrounding environment are very popular."

Liang said most of the funding for better public toilets has come from the government, but he said some enterprises are also supporting the improvements.

"In Haidian District, enterprises have funded the construction of more than 100 mobile public toilets for use on the streets."

Yu Debing, deputy director of the Beijing Tourism Administration said, "Facilities for the disabled have already been installed in three-, four- and five-star hotels in Beijing."

Liang said the city spent a minimum of 40 million yuan (US$4.8 million) to build or upgrade 200 public toilets a year from the year 2000 until it doubled the expenditure to 80 million yuan (US$9.7 million) in 2002. The city is now building or renovating more than 400 public toilets per year.

According to the Singapore-based World Toilet Organization, "We do it everyday, yet we do not talk about it. It is 'taboo' on one hand and impolite to talk about it. Yet, when we go to 'toilets away from home' we sometimes put up with the many discomforts like hygiene problems, inadequate sanitation, design flaws and many other problems associated with public toilets.

"Public toilets serve the male and female but it goes beyond that. What about the visually, physically and mentally handicapped, the child, the elderly, or people with babies, as well as certain religious and cultural toilet requirements?"

According to the toilet-organization member Jack Sim, "Today, about 2.4 billion people do not have access to even a simple latrine. As a result human waste heavily pollutes rivers and lakes in developing countries. The most important source of water contamination in developing countries is human faeces, due a lack of adequate sanitation facilities."

Public toilets are especially troublesome for women, Sim said.

"It takes 90 seconds for them [women] to do their business; for the gents, only 30 seconds. So women should have more toilet booths than gents, but the truth is the reverse."

The 2004 summit, under the theme "Human Environment and Living," will focus on:

A global perspective: the relationship between toilets and the quality of human life;

World-class tourism and toilets;

Entrepreneurship: social and economic returns on investment;

Maintenance: good toilets improve heartland community living;

Design: Codes of practice for toilets;

Cultural diversity: toilets that meet cultural needs;

Water conservation: cost-effective approaches to water use;

Toilets: past, present and future; and

World Toilet Day on November 19.

Co-organizers of the summit are the World Toilet Organization; the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Tourism and the Beijing Municipal Administration Commission. Sponsors include: the Beijing Association of Environmental Sanitation; the Beijing Tourism Industry Association and Beijing Tourism Group, with assistance from the Beijing Overseas Tourism Corporation Limited.

Toilet association members from Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan Province, Australia, Beijing, Britain, Finland, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, along with experts and industry leaders in the field are expected to participate in the summit.

For further information, see: http://www.worldtoilet.org