We have to change the people psychology first
October 1st 2005

Jack Sim, founder and chairman of the World Toilet Organisation spoke exclusively to Tim McManan-Smith about how to improve toilet provision worldwide

We must start people talking about toilets if we are to improve the situation says Jack Sim.

"When I looked around and thought about the situation there was nobody talking about toilets, I thought is it me?". From these initial musings a whole world wide organisation; The World Toilet Organization, has formed along with exhibitions and symposia to discuss this issue which we seem unable to address properly yet still needs solving. When the first World Toilet Summit in the west was held in Belfast last month I spoke to Jack about the problems that face us and what needs to be done so that we achieve real progress.

The first major problem is that many people are unwilling to discuss the problems that exist both in terms of the quality of public facilities and the need for access to hygienic facilities for much of the world's population. Obviously in this magazine we focus on the UK's need for good clean toilet provision but when taking into account the whole world it is worth bearing in mind that toilets are more of an issue than cleanliness. Water Aid's Dying for the Toilet report stated that: 42% of the world's population (2.6 billion people) have no safe place to go to the toilet and that a child dies every 15 seconds from diarrhoea caused largely by poor sanitation and water. Water Aid also states that "Access to hygienic toilets is of huge importance to global health, wealth and human dignity. - It was these themes that led Jack Sim, a wealthy Singapore businessman to form the World Toilet Organization and devote himself to the improvment of world toilet provision both in quality and quantity.

"It starts when people are very young," says Jack Sim, "children are told by their mum that it is improper to talk about this subject. Let's talk about it so thay they feel it is normal now.

You should try to teach children; build a foundation of not being afraid of the toilet. If people fear the toilet they will cause violence to it." Jack finds that this fundamental barrier is one of the reasons that we put up with disgusting toilets because we will not complain and we half expect them to be bad anyway. "The toilet is your friend, instead of saying this to children we say, 'If you don't study hard you will end up cleaning toilets'. This is demeaning a natural function," comments Jack Sim. Jack feels that there is a sense of guilt in doing something which is entirely natural and that the psychology involved invoked by society is unecessary when what we are talking about is a normal function of the human body. In Japan, for instance, women constantly flush the toilet to mask the noises.

Jack also went on to say that it is such a taboo there is no appropriate language with which to talk about this natural function. "Language in the middle does not exist, there is scientific language such as excretia, faeces, defecate or obscene language. We talk about food and drink positively, but where does it go? We can't talk about it."

"There is an ABC of toilets," says Jack Sim, "'Architecture, behaviour and cleaning'. All of these need to be right for improvements to be made. Toilets have to be well designed with ease of accessibility for hand drying and so on and also having enough facilities, a particular gripe for women. A toilet has to be clean for both hygiene and to engender respect from the user. Then there is behaviour. If a person visits a dirty toilet they will behave badly and if the toilet is immacculate then they will behave well. "The toilet is not at fault but we must have it in a condition that will mean people respect it. The majority will then become good but not all, so we will always have a few vandals. With regard to this we have to use enforcement heavily."

So for better toilets we need to change the way people view them and this will only change by having the type of facilities that lead to people respecting them i.e. well designed clean premises.

Jack Sim is a successful Singapore businessman and holds a postgraduate diploma in Marketing from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He is the founder and current Chairman of the World Toilet Organisation. He made initial contact with toilet associations in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China and in 2001 gathered all these bodies together at the inaugural World Toilet Summit to form the World Toilet Organization. Jack has relinquished all other business duties to devote himself fully to the World Toilet Organization, as a volunteer without pay.

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