Héloïse Goy, with Alexis Patri 10:44 a.m., April 15, 2022
In its documentary box "Monde en Face", France 5 broadcasts Sunday evening an investigation entitled "The great battle of the toilets".
Its director Arnaud Robert explains to the microphone of Europe 1 the major global health and economic issues that lie behind the taboo subject of our droppings.
INTERVIEW
It's not a very glamorous subject, it is rarely mentioned in the media, but it has the advantage of concerning everyone: the toilet.
However, they have real challenges for public health in the world.
It is on these issues that France 5 raises the bezel on Sunday evening, with the broadcast of the documentary
The great battle of the toilets
, broadcast in the box "Le monde en face".
According to the WHO, half of the world's population does not have a safe toilet.
Today, nearly 700 million human beings defecate in the open.
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“We hardly ever talk about shit”
These poor sanitation conditions have serious health consequences and can lead to diseases such as hepatitis A, typhoid and dysentery.
Faced with this, the UN has included in the 2030 agenda the end of open defecation.
"It's the supreme universal taboo. We obviously don't talk about shit at the table. We almost never talk about shit", observes the director of the documentary Arnaud Robert at our microphone.
"And, in reality, there are global development issues that are related to shit, how we deal with it, how we deal with health issues related to it. And there are huge economic issues too around how we deal with our shit."
Towards the end of the flush
The documentary also points to the excessive water consumption required by our modern toilets.
On average, we each consume 36 liters of water a day just by flushing.
Another problem: our wastewater treatment plants which release too many pollutants.
But a toilet revolution is underway around the world.
"From the moment the UN became interested in these subjects and Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, also became interested in them, it became a global issue. There are countries who have made toilet revolutions at a very low technological level. The challenge was to provide safe sanitary facilities", explains Arnaud Robert.
“In developing countries, we build toilets that are really holes. But Bill Gates imposed the narrative of the technological toilets, which may one day make it possible to no longer have the flush toilet system with sewers and a sewage treatment plant that has been in use for 150 years."
The documentary
The great battle of the toilets
is to be seen Sunday at 8:55 p.m. on France 5.