Rose George: Let's talk crap. Seriously.

172,738 views ・ 2013-04-15

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
0
0
7000
00:12
Let's talk dirty.
1
12532
4112
00:16
A few years ago, oddly enough,
2
16644
2736
00:19
I needed the bathroom,
3
19380
2734
00:22
and I found one, a public bathroom,
4
22114
3350
00:25
and I went into the stall,
5
25464
2364
00:27
and I prepared to do what I'd done most of my life:
6
27828
3297
00:31
use the toilet, flush the toilet, forget about the toilet.
7
31125
4542
00:35
And for some reason that day, instead,
8
35667
2081
00:37
I asked myself a question,
9
37748
2184
00:39
and it was, where does this stuff go?
10
39932
3876
00:43
And with that question, I found myself plunged
11
43808
3892
00:47
into the world of sanitation --
12
47700
4024
00:51
there's more coming -- (Laughter) —
13
51724
1565
00:53
sanitation, toilets and poop,
14
53289
4569
00:57
and I have yet to emerge.
15
57858
3073
01:00
And that's because it's such an enraging,
16
60931
2305
01:03
yet engaging place to be.
17
63236
3216
01:06
To go back to that toilet,
18
66452
3256
01:09
it wasn't a particularly fancy toilet,
19
69708
2794
01:12
it wasn't as nice as this one
20
72502
1435
01:13
from the World Toilet Organization.
21
73937
2931
01:16
That's the other WTO. (Laughter)
22
76868
4267
01:21
But it had a lockable door, it had privacy, it had water,
23
81135
3614
01:24
it had soap so I could wash my hands,
24
84749
2264
01:27
and I did because I'm a woman, and we do that.
25
87013
3064
01:30
(Laughter) (Applause)
26
90077
5608
01:35
But that day, when I asked that question,
27
95685
2411
01:38
I learned something, and that was that I'd grown up thinking
28
98096
2733
01:40
that a toilet like that was my right,
29
100829
2215
01:43
when in fact it's a privilege.
30
103044
3178
01:46
2.5 billion people worldwide have no adequate toilet.
31
106222
5259
01:51
They don't have a bucket or a box.
32
111481
3940
01:55
Forty percent of the world with no adequate toilet.
33
115421
4208
01:59
And they have to do what this little boy is doing
34
119629
2497
02:02
by the side of the Mumbai Airport expressway,
35
122126
2935
02:05
which is called open defecation,
36
125061
2648
02:07
or poo-pooing in the open.
37
127709
3355
02:11
And he does that every day,
38
131064
2234
02:13
and every day, probably, that guy in the picture
39
133298
2499
02:15
walks on by,
40
135797
1854
02:17
because he sees that little boy, but he doesn't see him.
41
137651
3458
02:21
But he should, because the problem
42
141109
2120
02:23
with all that poop lying around
43
143229
2360
02:25
is that poop carries passengers.
44
145589
3008
02:28
Fifty communicable diseases like to travel in human shit.
45
148597
4299
02:32
All those things, the eggs, the cysts,
46
152896
2421
02:35
the bacteria, the viruses, all those can travel
47
155317
2776
02:38
in one gram of human feces.
48
158093
3408
02:41
How? Well, that little boy will not have washed his hands.
49
161501
3712
02:45
He's barefoot. He'll run back into his house,
50
165213
2496
02:47
and he will contaminate his drinking water and his food
51
167709
3655
02:51
and his environment
52
171364
1404
02:52
with whatever diseases he may be carrying
53
172768
2397
02:55
by fecal particles that are on his fingers and feet.
54
175165
5749
03:00
In what I call the flushed-and-plumbed world
55
180914
2272
03:03
that most of us in this room are lucky to live in,
56
183186
2627
03:05
the most common symptoms associated with those diseases,
57
185813
3049
03:08
diarrhea, is now a bit of a joke.
58
188862
2826
03:11
It's the runs, the Hershey squirts, the squits.
59
191688
3691
03:15
Where I come from, we call it Delhi belly,
60
195379
1850
03:17
as a legacy of empire.
61
197229
2608
03:19
But if you search for a stock photo of diarrhea
62
199837
3740
03:23
in a leading photo image agency,
63
203577
2791
03:26
this is the picture that you come up with.
64
206368
2020
03:28
(Laughter)
65
208388
1865
03:30
Still not sure about the bikini.
66
210253
5179
03:35
And here's another image of diarrhea.
67
215432
2496
03:37
This is Marie Saylee, nine months old.
68
217928
3112
03:41
You can't see her, because she's buried
69
221040
1799
03:42
under that green grass in a little village in Liberia,
70
222839
3283
03:46
because she died in three days from diarrhea --
71
226122
3562
03:49
the Hershey squirts, the runs, a joke.
72
229684
3629
03:53
And that's her dad.
73
233313
2479
03:55
But she wasn't alone that day,
74
235792
1562
03:57
because 4,000 other children died of diarrhea,
75
237354
3800
04:01
and they do every day.
76
241154
2670
04:03
Diarrhea is the second biggest killer of children worldwide,
77
243824
4999
04:08
and you've probably been asked to care about things
78
248823
2672
04:11
like HIV/AIDS or T.B. or measles,
79
251495
3161
04:14
but diarrhea kills more children
80
254656
1344
04:16
than all those three things put together.
81
256000
3712
04:19
It's a very potent weapon of mass destruction.
82
259712
4342
04:24
And the cost to the world is immense:
83
264054
3148
04:27
260 billion dollars lost every year
84
267202
2489
04:29
on the losses to poor sanitation.
85
269691
2993
04:32
These are cholera beds in Haiti.
86
272684
1681
04:34
You'll have heard of cholera, but we don't hear about diarrhea.
87
274365
3499
04:37
It gets a fraction of the attention and funding
88
277864
2184
04:40
given to any of those other diseases.
89
280048
3716
04:43
But we know how to fix this.
90
283764
2412
04:46
We know, because in the mid-19th century,
91
286176
3520
04:49
wonderful Victorian engineers
92
289696
2389
04:52
installed systems of sewers and wastewater treatment
93
292085
2803
04:54
and the flush toilet, and disease dropped dramatically.
94
294888
4711
04:59
Child mortality dropped by the most
95
299599
1909
05:01
it had ever dropped in history.
96
301508
2190
05:03
The flush toilet was voted the best medical advance
97
303698
2946
05:06
of the last 200 years by the readers of the British Medical Journal,
98
306644
3180
05:09
and they were choosing over the Pill, anesthesia,
99
309824
2843
05:12
and surgery.
100
312667
1408
05:14
It's a wonderful waste disposal device.
101
314075
2721
05:16
But I think that it's so good — it doesn't smell,
102
316796
3618
05:20
we can put it in our house, we can lock it behind a door —
103
320414
2779
05:23
and I think we've locked it out of conversation too.
104
323193
3004
05:26
We don't have a neutral word for it.
105
326197
1655
05:27
Poop's not particularly adequate.
106
327852
1943
05:29
Shit offends people. Feces is too medical.
107
329795
4125
05:33
Because I can't explain otherwise,
108
333920
2192
05:36
when I look at the figures, what's going on.
109
336112
3568
05:39
We know how to solve diarrhea and sanitation,
110
339680
2574
05:42
but if you look at the budgets of countries,
111
342254
2330
05:44
developing and developed,
112
344584
2321
05:46
you'll think there's something wrong with the math,
113
346905
2551
05:49
because you'll expect absurdities like
114
349456
2826
05:52
Pakistan spending 47 times more on its military
115
352282
2882
05:55
than it does on water and sanitation,
116
355164
2281
05:57
even though 150,000 children die of diarrhea
117
357445
2808
06:00
in Pakistan every year.
118
360253
2099
06:02
But then you look at that already minuscule
119
362352
1960
06:04
water and sanitation budget,
120
364312
1894
06:06
and 75 to 90 percent of it will go on clean water supply,
121
366206
3484
06:09
which is great; we all need water.
122
369690
1953
06:11
No one's going to refuse clean water.
123
371643
2307
06:13
But the humble latrine, or flush toilet,
124
373950
2951
06:16
reduces disease by twice as much
125
376901
2109
06:19
as just putting in clean water.
126
379010
2424
06:21
Think about it. That little boy
127
381434
1311
06:22
who's running back into his house,
128
382745
1855
06:24
he may have a nice, clean fresh water supply,
129
384600
2110
06:26
but he's got dirty hands that he's going to contaminate his water supply with.
130
386710
4460
06:31
And I think that the real waste of human waste
131
391170
3504
06:34
is that we are wasting it as a resource
132
394674
2768
06:37
and as an incredible trigger for development,
133
397442
3760
06:41
because these are a few things that toilets
134
401202
2150
06:43
and poop itself can do for us.
135
403352
2930
06:46
So a toilet can put a girl back in school.
136
406282
3176
06:49
Twenty-five percent of girls in India drop out of school
137
409458
2832
06:52
because they have no adequate sanitation.
138
412290
3518
06:55
They've been used to sitting through lessons
139
415808
1765
06:57
for years and years holding it in.
140
417573
2917
07:00
We've all done that, but they do it every day,
141
420490
2760
07:03
and when they hit puberty and they start menstruating,
142
423250
2556
07:05
it just gets too much.
143
425806
2343
07:08
And I understand that. Who can blame them?
144
428149
3541
07:11
So if you met an educationalist and said,
145
431690
1926
07:13
"I can improve education attendance rates by 25 percent
146
433616
2874
07:16
with just one simple thing,"
147
436490
2198
07:18
you'd make a lot of friends in education.
148
438688
2813
07:21
That's not the only thing it can do for you.
149
441501
2535
07:24
Poop can cook your dinner.
150
444036
3060
07:27
It's got nutrients in it.
151
447096
1694
07:28
We ingest nutrients. We excrete nutrients as well.
152
448790
2461
07:31
We don't keep them all.
153
451251
1852
07:33
In Rwanda, they are now getting
154
453103
2627
07:35
75 percent of their cooking fuel in their prison system
155
455730
2844
07:38
from the contents of prisoners' bowels.
156
458574
3362
07:41
So these are a bunch of inmates in a prison in Butare.
157
461936
3786
07:45
They're genocidal inmates, most of them,
158
465722
2152
07:47
and they're stirring the contents of their own latrines,
159
467874
3648
07:51
because if you put poop in a sealed environment, in a tank,
160
471522
3311
07:54
pretty much like a stomach,
161
474833
1756
07:56
then, pretty much like a stomach, it gives off gas,
162
476589
2813
07:59
and you can cook with it.
163
479402
2025
08:01
And you might think it's just good karma
164
481427
2143
08:03
to see these guys stirring shit,
165
483570
2472
08:06
but it's also good economic sense,
166
486042
2300
08:08
because they're saving a million dollars a year.
167
488342
2066
08:10
They're cutting down on deforestation,
168
490408
2006
08:12
and they've found a fuel supply that is inexhaustible,
169
492414
2903
08:15
infinite and free at the point of production.
170
495317
4742
08:20
It's not just in the poor world that poop can save lives.
171
500059
3348
08:23
Here's a woman who's about to get a dose
172
503407
2152
08:25
of the brown stuff in those syringes,
173
505559
1753
08:27
which is what you think it is,
174
507312
1936
08:29
except not quite, because it's actually donated.
175
509248
3044
08:32
There is now a new career path called stool donor.
176
512292
2882
08:35
It's like the new sperm donor.
177
515174
1820
08:36
Because she has been suffering from a superbug called C. diff,
178
516994
2993
08:39
and it's resistant to antibiotics in many cases.
179
519987
3444
08:43
She's been suffering for years.
180
523431
1512
08:44
She gets a dose of healthy human feces,
181
524943
3092
08:48
and the cure rate for this procedure is 94 percent.
182
528035
4481
08:52
It's astonishing, but hardly anyone is still doing it.
183
532516
4398
08:56
Maybe it's the ick factor.
184
536914
2022
08:58
That's okay, because there's a team of research scientists
185
538936
2870
09:01
in Canada who have now created a stool sample,
186
541806
2977
09:04
a fake stool sample which is called RePOOPulate.
187
544783
2784
09:07
So you'd be thinking by now, okay, the solution's simple,
188
547567
2288
09:09
we give everyone a toilet.
189
549855
1885
09:11
And this is where it gets really interesting,
190
551740
2153
09:13
because it's not that simple, because we are not simple.
191
553893
2925
09:16
So the really interesting, exciting work --
192
556818
4093
09:20
this is the engaging bit -- in sanitation is that
193
560911
2936
09:23
we need to understand human psychology.
194
563847
2328
09:26
We need to understand software
195
566175
2376
09:28
as well as just giving someone hardware.
196
568551
2352
09:30
They've found in many developing countries that
197
570903
1782
09:32
governments have gone in and given out free latrines
198
572685
2722
09:35
and gone back a few years later and found that they've
199
575407
2156
09:37
got lots of new goat sheds or temples or spare rooms
200
577563
4123
09:41
with their owners happily walking past them
201
581686
2367
09:44
and going over to the open defecating ground.
202
584053
3810
09:47
So the idea is to manipulate human emotion.
203
587863
3024
09:50
It's been done for decades. The soap companies did it
204
590887
2501
09:53
in the early 20th century.
205
593388
1939
09:55
They tried selling soap as healthy. No one bought it.
206
595327
2759
09:58
They tried selling it as sexy. Everyone bought it.
207
598086
4167
10:02
In India now there's a campaign
208
602253
1355
10:03
which persuades young brides
209
603608
2546
10:06
not to marry into families that don't have a toilet.
210
606154
3098
10:09
It's called "No Loo, No I Do."
211
609252
2668
10:11
(Laughter)
212
611920
2347
10:14
And in case you think that poster's just propaganda,
213
614267
1975
10:16
here's Priyanka, 23 years old.
214
616242
2100
10:18
I met her last October in India,
215
618342
2121
10:20
and she grew up in a conservative environment.
216
620463
3057
10:23
She grew up in a rural village in a poor area of India,
217
623520
3096
10:26
and she was engaged at 14, and then at 21 or so,
218
626616
4166
10:30
she moved into her in-law's house.
219
630782
1771
10:32
And she was horrified to get there and find
220
632553
2035
10:34
that they didn't have a toilet.
221
634588
1292
10:35
She'd grown up with a latrine.
222
635880
1367
10:37
It was no big deal, but it was a latrine.
223
637247
1954
10:39
And the first night she was there, she was told
224
639201
2023
10:41
that at 4 o'clock in the morning --
225
641224
1207
10:42
her mother-in-law got her up, told her to go outside
226
642431
2839
10:45
and go and do it in the dark in the open.
227
645270
2820
10:48
And she was scared. She was scared of drunks hanging around.
228
648090
2070
10:50
She was scared of snakes. She was scared of rape.
229
650160
2874
10:53
After three days, she did an unthinkable thing.
230
653034
2482
10:55
She left.
231
655516
1740
10:57
And if you know anything about rural India,
232
657256
1585
10:58
you'll know that's an unspeakably courageous thing to do.
233
658841
3478
11:02
But not just that.
234
662319
1057
11:03
She got her toilet, and now she goes around
235
663376
2412
11:05
all the other villages in India
236
665788
1598
11:07
persuading other women to do the same thing.
237
667386
1753
11:09
It's what I call social contagion, and it's really powerful
238
669139
3461
11:12
and really exciting.
239
672600
2175
11:14
Another version of this, another village in India
240
674775
2089
11:16
near where Priyanka lives
241
676864
1997
11:18
is this village, called Lakara, and about a year ago,
242
678861
3875
11:22
it had no toilets whatsoever.
243
682736
1451
11:24
Kids were dying of diarrhea and cholera.
244
684187
2294
11:26
Some visitors came, using various behavioral change tricks
245
686481
4342
11:30
like putting out a plate of food and a plate of shit
246
690823
2794
11:33
and watching the flies go one to the other.
247
693617
2217
11:35
Somehow, people who'd been thinking
248
695834
2567
11:38
that what they were doing was not disgusting at all
249
698401
1529
11:39
suddenly thought, "Oops."
250
699930
1872
11:41
Not only that, but they were ingesting their neighbors' shit.
251
701802
2327
11:44
That's what really made them change their behavior.
252
704129
3128
11:47
So this woman, this boy's mother
253
707257
2536
11:49
installed this latrine in a few hours.
254
709793
2485
11:52
Her entire life, she'd been using the banana field behind,
255
712278
2383
11:54
but she installed the latrine in a few hours.
256
714661
1568
11:56
It cost nothing. It's going to save that boy's life.
257
716229
3673
11:59
So when I get despondent about the state of sanitation,
258
719902
3191
12:03
even though these are pretty exciting times
259
723093
2196
12:05
because we've got the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
260
725289
2578
12:07
reinventing the toilet, which is great,
261
727867
2062
12:09
we've got Matt Damon going on bathroom strike,
262
729929
2554
12:12
which is great for humanity, very bad for his colon.
263
732483
3735
12:16
But there are things to worry about.
264
736218
1714
12:17
It's the most off-track Millennium Development Goal.
265
737932
2758
12:20
It's about 50 or so years off track.
266
740690
2346
12:23
We're not going to meet targets,
267
743036
1336
12:24
providing people with sanitation at this rate.
268
744372
3285
12:27
So when I get sad about sanitation,
269
747657
3481
12:31
I think of Japan, because Japan 70 years ago
270
751138
3319
12:34
was a nation of people who used pit latrines
271
754457
2589
12:37
and wiped with sticks,
272
757046
2132
12:39
and now it's a nation of what are called Woshurettos,
273
759178
3327
12:42
washlet toilets.
274
762505
1480
12:43
They have in-built bidet nozzles for a lovely,
275
763985
2344
12:46
hands-free cleaning experience,
276
766329
2745
12:49
and they have various other features
277
769074
2172
12:51
like a heated seat and an automatic lid-raising device
278
771246
2975
12:54
which is known as the "marriage-saver."
279
774221
2341
12:56
(Laughter)
280
776562
1456
12:58
But most importantly, what they have done in Japan,
281
778018
2405
13:00
which I find so inspirational,
282
780423
1500
13:01
is they've brought the toilet out from behind the locked door.
283
781923
2564
13:04
They've made it conversational.
284
784487
1501
13:05
People go out and upgrade their toilet.
285
785988
3402
13:09
They talk about it. They've sanitized it.
286
789390
4408
13:13
I hope that we can do that. It's not a difficult thing to do.
287
793798
4480
13:18
All we really need to do
288
798278
2270
13:20
is look at this issue
289
800548
1842
13:22
as the urgent, shameful issue that it is.
290
802390
4312
13:26
And don't think that it's just in the poor world that things are wrong.
291
806702
2773
13:29
Our sewers are crumbling.
292
809475
2164
13:31
Things are going wrong here too.
293
811639
2167
13:33
The solution to all of this is pretty easy.
294
813806
2899
13:36
I'm going to make your lives easy this afternoon
295
816705
1721
13:38
and just ask you to do one thing,
296
818426
2353
13:40
and that's to go out, protest,
297
820779
3076
13:43
speak about the unspeakable,
298
823855
2238
13:46
and talk shit.
299
826093
1539
13:47
Thank you.
300
827632
1954
13:49
(Applause)
301
829586
5324
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7