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Zusammenfassung von The Big Necessity

Name: The Big Necessity
Rating: 4.9 (10 reviews)
Author: Rose George

Rose George

The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters

4.9 (10 Bewertungen)

17 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

'The Big Necessity' by Rose George is a non-fiction book that explores the cultural and social significance of human waste. It delves into the history, science, and politics of sanitation while providing insights into the global sanitation crisis.

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Anthropologie Alternative Perspektiven Erkrankungen

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What’s in it for me? Learn about the features and future of feces.

Many parents have read Everyone Poops to their children – or some other book that unveils the mysteries of defecation. Post-potty training, however, most of us don’t give much thought to the machinations or implications of our bowel movements, a disregard that’s at the core of some major issues.

Substandard sanitation is one of the biggest causes of death and disease in the world. Furthermore, the way we dispose of our feces is, so to speak, ass-backward; fecal matter is a resource that could be put to great use for a number of things that, in today’s world, are hard to even imagine. So let’s explore the many little-known facts about, and uses for, human waste.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how many children die every year due to nonexistent sanitation;
why a $1 investment in sanitation can give a huge return; and
how China used their shit in a good way.

Lack of sanitation is a huge global health problem with deadly consequences.

Most people prefer not to think about what happens to all the stuff we flush down the toilet. As the saying goes: out of sight, out of mind. That said, many people in the world don’t have this luxury.

In fact, 2.6 billion people live in environments utterly devoid of sanitation.

This doesn’t mean they’re forced to use a public toilet or even a dirty old outhouse that empties into a drain. It means that 2.6 billion people have no access to a toilet of any kind. They have to defecate where they can – in public, in the woods or even in plastic bags which they then discard in the narrow alleyways of overcrowded slums.

People in such conditions constantly walk on feces and get it on their clothes, which can result in it getting into food and drinking water.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Just consider this upsetting fact: Four out of ten people live every day in the midst of human excrement.

This global sanitation shortage causes a staggering amount of disease: One out of every ten illnesses in the world can be traced back to a lack of sanitation, which can lead to anything from poor hygiene to contaminated water. In fact, the number of children who have died from diarrhea in the past decade is greater than the combined death toll of all armed conflict since World War II.

The reason for this is simple. One gram of feces can contain ten million viruses, one million bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts and 100 worm eggs – and sanitation experts estimate that people living without sanitation sometimes consume as much as ten grams of fecal matter in one day.

The result of this?

Every 15 seconds, a child dies from diarrhea. And since approximately 90 percent of diarrhea is due to fecally contaminated food or water, it’s no wonder that UNICEF considers it the biggest barrier to survival for a small child in a developing country, more of threat than AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria.

Proper sanitation can save millions of lives and billions of dollars.

There have been a lot of important medical developments over the past 200 years, from antibiotics and penicillin to birth control and synthetic insulin. But when the British Medical Journal asked its readers to pick the most important medical innovation, guess what they chose: sanitation.

And they’re not alone in thinking that sanitation is the biggest medical advancement in recent history.

Sanitation is a taboo subject, making it even more difficult for people to address the problem.

Just as people don’t like to think about what happens after they flush the toilet, they don’t like to talk about sanitation, either. Even finding the right words can be a struggle. But when did this become such a roadblock to progress?

It may have to do with the limitations of the English language.

Shifting people’s habits and attitudes toward sanitation is essential for effective activism.

Every day the equivalent of 155,000 truckloads of feces are deposited out in the open and public areas of India. That’s 200,000 tons of raw, untreated sewage that people have to walk through and live around. There must be a better way, right?

This problem of open-defecation hasn’t gone unnoticed. Between 1986 and 1999, 9.45 million latrines were installed by the India Central Rural Sanitation Program, increasing their availability by 15 percent.

Sanitation is a worldwide problem that no one should ignore.

At this point, you might be thinking that sanitation is only a problem for poor and underdeveloped countries. Alas, this is far from the truth.

Well-developed countries and prosperous cities are also facing sewage problems.

Human “waste” is a useful resource, as China is making clear.

So, what can we do with all our waste? Obviously, just dumping it into our water isn’t the best solution.

Martin Luther, a leader of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, reportedly ate a spoonful of his own shit every day and wrote that he “couldn’t understand the generosity of a God who freely gave such important and useful remedies.” While this is not actionable advice, Luther was definitely onto something.

Recycling human waste has many complexities and challenges, much like our attitude toward human waste.

If these possibilities for reusing human “waste” seem too good to be true, that’s because they sort of are. While biogas has a lot of potential, it’s far from perfect; we’re not living in a utopian wonderland quite yet.

Reusing human waste comes with a mess of issues, many of them illustrated, once again, by China.

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Worum geht es in The Big Necessity?

The Big Necessity (2008) takes a detailed look at the issues surrounding human excrement. Most people would rather ignore these issues – but turning a deaf ear is precisely what’s led to the sanitation crises plaguing the world today. Sanitation is too important to dismiss; a lack of it is causing thousands of needless deaths worldwide. Find out what can be done to help in these blinks.

Bestes Zitat aus The Big Necessity

...HIV/AIDS cannot be discussed without talking frankly about sex… the problem of sanitation cannot be discussed without talking frankly about shit. - Umesh Panday, Nepali sanitation activist

—Rose George

Wer The Big Necessity lesen sollte

Anyone who’s ever had a bowel movement
Anthropologists interested in city-planning, urban design and living
Activists interested in global health and saving lives

Über den Autor

Rose George’s writings have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Guardian and Scientific American. Her other books include Ninety Percent of Everything and A Life Removed.

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