Don’t take the simple things for granted

October 6th, 2008 at 08:19am Jennie Pollock

The stock market is bombing, and you can feel anxiety in the air. Here is some perspective: one reminder of how good we have it in America. From a profile on one of Time magazine’s environmental heroes, Jack Sim:

Some 2.6 billion people have no access to toilets, and groundwater contaminated by fecal matter is a major killer; as many as 2 million people die every year because of waterborne diarrheal diseases, often caused by poor sanitation. But getting rural villagers to realize the importance of toilets is difficult because of the embarrassment factor. Sim, a retired construction and real estate entrepreneur, founded the nonprofit World Toilet Organizatio in 2001 to change that mind-set. “It’s a question of marketing toilets as a status symbol,” he says, noting that plenty of poor people buy cell phones as soon as they’ve saved enough money. “I want people to aspire to owning a toilet, just like others aspire to own a Louis Vuitton bag.”

Entry Filed under: Nature, Green awards