AUDIO: ADVENTURES IN HUMAN WASTE

The Economist talks to Rose George, author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters" ...

From ECONOMIST.COM

"The last taboo, surely, is shit", observes The Economist in its review of Rose George's "fascinating and eloquent" new book. But "there is a great deal that needs to be said about excretion that is not remotely funny. Two-fifths of the world's population has nowhere to defecate except open ground. That is 2.6 billion people whose drinking water contains their and their neighbour's faeces; whose food is contaminated by the flies that lay their eggs in human waste; who live in filth and very often die because of it."

In this Economist podcast, Ms George talks about her travels around the world, where she witnessed various strategies for dealing with this problem, from underground tanks in rural China to fancy robo-toilets in posh parts of Japan. "I think if seven-year-olds were in charge of the world's sanitation we would be in a much better place", she contends. "They don't see it as a threatening substance, whereas we adults it gets educated into us that this is a dirty, nasty subject." ~ E.B.