Vanguard: The World’s Toilet Crisis (full episode)

I produced the hour-long documentary, “The World’s Toilet Crisis,” which aired Wednesday, June 9 on Current TV.

Vanguard: All Hail the Toilet

The article and slide show below were originally published on Current TV’s Vanguard blog: All Hail the Toilet: Making “The World’s Toilet Crisis.”

Lisa Biagiotti is the producer of “The World’s Toilet Crisis,” which aired Wednesday, June 9 on Current TV.

Scribbled across the white board in Yasu Tsuji’s edit room are the words: “A toilet is not just a toilet.” The ridiculousness of this phrase has haunted poor Yasu since I wrote it (and repeated it often) back in late March when correspondent Adam Yamaguchi, producer Mitch Koss and I returned from the field.

It’s a silly statement, but for nearly half of the world, a toilet needs to be more than just a toilet — it must be exalted as a symbol of modernity, success, status — even sex.

When people practice open defecation, children get sick from fecally-contaminated water. As a result, parents miss work caring for children suffering from complications of chronic diarrhea. Medical bills mount. When teenaged girls begin menstruating, they must leave the cities and return to rural villages where there is more privacy. The cycle churns.

But preventable diarrhea deaths of 4,000 children every day, the loss of money and job opportunities and the stunting of girls’ education are not enough to get people to change behavior and adopt toilets.

We visited India to show the magnitude of the problem — 600 million open defecators — in crowded, septic cities. We traveled to Indonesia because it’s where we saw real progress with national and local governments recognizing the problem, private and public sectors collaborating to solve it, toilet entrepreneurs inventing a sanitation industry, and most importantly, people desiring to end open defecation.

It turns out, the toilet crisis isn’t really a poverty problem or a shortage of toilets problem — it’s an emotional, behavioral and cultural problem. It’s why governments and NGOs are trying to solve it with Advertising 101 tactics — creating an image to spark demand, developing the supply side and then repeating the messages to reinforce the sale of the image and the product.

We spoke to hundreds of people in reporting this story. We’d like to thank all those who eagerly led us through open fields, along river banks and around street corners to show us proof of human waste…and thank you to those who invited us into their homes for the sole purpose of toilet inspection.

Below are some special thanks and links to more toilet and sanitation information.

Thank you. We hope when you watch the documentary, you’ll dream about the possibilities of toilets. We do. Even Yasu does.

Watch a Flickr slideshow from Lisa’s photos here.

Vanguard documentary: The World’s Toilet Crisis

I produced this hour-long documentary for Current TV’s Vanguard series.

For the past several months, I’ve been producing the documentary “The World’s Toilet Crisis,” which airs on Current TV on Wednesday, June 9.

It’s a documentary for all of us who use toilets and take them for granted!

But let’s not forget the 2.6 billion of us — 40% of the world’s population — who don’t use toilets and defecate anywhere we can — in streets, open fields, river banks and, most dangerously, in the very water we drink. As a result of open defecation, more than 2 million people — including 1.5 million children — die from complications of chronic diarrhea every year.

There’s no shortage of attention to the water crisis, but to be blunt, the real reason the water’s dirty is because there’s shit in the water.

So, on this week’s episode of Vanguard, we tackle the toilet crisis. We travel to India, Singapore and Indonesia to understand why people don’t use toilets and what’s being done to solve this silent (but deadly) epidemic.

“The World’s Toilet Crisis” airs on Current TV this Wednesday, June 9 at 10/9c (and at 10 p.m. pst).

Current TV channels by cable provider:
Time Warner (103 or 142)
Comcast (107 or 125)
Direct TV (358)
Verizon FiOS (192)
Dish (196)

You can also catch it the following day on Hulu. Or, download it from iTunes.

If you watch it, I’d recommend NOT sitting down in front of the tube with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a warm glass of milk. Actually, I’d suggest not eating while watching (period).

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