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India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

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Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#101

Post by sirclueless »

burkaman wrote: post #97
thowbit9 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because learning makes people less stupid in our part of the world.

They literally don't have a toilet. Are they going to conjure one if they become smart enough? I understand there's an issue of people not using them once they have one, but step one is getting a toilet, and step two is educating people enough to want to use them.

I'm not so sure. Step 1 is making sure people want a toilet. If you give someone a toilet without their understanding its purpose, it is going to be neglected and considered pointless.

If people want toilets, they can spend some free time to dig a big pit in a nearby yard, and it will be more sanitary than their current situation. Ultimately the two go hand in hand (toilets and education) but education without toilets is a problem that solves itself, while toilets without education is doomed to fail.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#102

Post by sidlls »

staticassertion wrote: post #40
avar wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to toilets isn’t enough. You > also have to persuade them to use the > toilets. I can't find it now, but there was a news video making the rounds a year or two ago that showed that this problem is much more fundamental than that. It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were…

The first or second chapter of Diffusion of Innovation covers a case where a health organization official tried to convince people to boil their water. No one did it. The concept of "germs" was so foreign to them, and their beliefs about water were already so ingrained. It was a complete failure. It seems obvious to say "if you drink dirty water you will get sick" but you're assuming that people can make so many conn…

People understand just fine what "illness" is. Every culture has a long tradition of medical practice since long before anyone knew what a germ was, and people in many civilizations (this isn't some eurocentric western-world thing) have known for hundreds or thousands of years to keep feces away from their food and water.

It seems obvious because it is obvious and has been, in India and practically everywhere else, for centuries.

What the parent described is probably due to other external factors (e.g. lack of choice, land restrictions or other things) that constrain behavior.

Edit for further clarity: it's unlikely these people are all "too stupid" to realize what they're doing is not healthy, but that there are other factors making it a (perceived) better choice than others (which may be perceived as worse).

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#103

Post by abandonliberty »

avar wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to toilets isn’t enough. You > also have to persuade them to use the > toilets. I can't find it now, but there was a news video making the rounds a year or two ago that showed that this problem is much more fundamental than that. It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were…

This is an area for innovation. Managing change/altering beliefs are extremely difficult.

To help iron deficiency in Cambodians, they were encouraged to cook with iron ingots. No one used them.

So they shaped the ingot into a lotus flower. Dice.

Cultural investigation showed that fish were symbols of luck, health, and happiness. Fish-shaped ingots worked out!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#104

Post by gozur88 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #42
nojvek wrote: post #4

Two of the most forward thinking folks I believe are Bill Gates and Elon Musk. While Elon wants to carve way into science fiction, Bill wants to ensure no one gets left behind. Exciting time to be alive. In this case big kudos goes to Narendra Modi and the Indian govt to ensure this happens. I believe such fundamental things are the most effective when govt pushes for it rather than individuals.

You can't carve away at science fiction without the human capital to do the science. Lifting huge populations out of disease and poverty is going to have a larger effect on scientific progress than spending money on directing the few who can do science right now.

Do you really think we don't have the human capital to do science? From what I can see, it's more that we have a shortage of plain old capital, and there are plenty of would-be scientists who take jobs in Wall St or at Twitter clones because there's no money for the science.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#105

Post by yourapostasy »

hinkley wrote: post #68
Cyph0n wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, this is quite baffling. The only answer I can think of is that India hasn't been prioritizing education in rural communities. Population is not a valid excuse: do people still shit where they drink in China? I'm more understanding when it comes to the lack of basic sanitation facilities, but lack of education is inexcusable in this day and age!

I'm currently reading a reprint of a 110 year old book about how China and Japan have kept their farms fertile for 4000 years. The basics are lots of elbow grease, and continuous application of river silt and (aged?) animal and human sewage. It occurs to me that this book predates both industrialization (factory effluent) and the last cholera outbreaks. Which makes me wonder what sort of sweeping agricultural practic…

Would appreciate a title if you run across it again and remember this request.

The term of art in the West is "anthroponics". A related subreddit [1] seems to currently focus upon using human urine in agriculture (with some really fascinating results of using watermelon seeds to sterilize the urine). Human feces given to black soldier flies and feeding their larvae to chickens and tilapia as a high-protein supplement might be more workable and timely than turning then feces into compost, and if scalable it could add a lot of new capacity to developed world sewer systems.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Anthroponics/

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#106

Post by lern_too_spel »

gozur88 wrote: post #104
lern_too_spel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't carve away at science fiction without the human capital to do the science. Lifting huge populations out of disease and poverty is going to have a larger effect on scientific progress than spending money on directing the few who can do science right now.

Do you really think we don't have the human capital to do science? From what I can see, it's more that we have a shortage of plain old capital, and there are plenty of would-be scientists who take jobs in Wall St or at Twitter clones because there's no money for the science.

You only need one person if your bar is merely to "do science," but if you want to do more science, you need more people. Do you really think that if we increased the number of people who could be scientists by 10X that scientific advancement wouldn't significantly increase in velocity? Just look at how primitive modern medicine still is.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#107

Post by ralfd »

newsat13 wrote: post #50
avar wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to toilets isn’t enough. You > also have to persuade them to use the > toilets. I can't find it now, but there was a news video making the rounds a year or two ago that showed that this problem is much more fundamental than that. It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were…

> It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were falling ill because they were literally taking a shit in the same river that they were getting their drinking water from, just a few meters away. Many things that are obvious to now are not obvious unless we are rightly educated. You might like to read http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/37566392... which believe it or not is not even 150 years old.

Sure, but non-obvious things often manifest in culture nonetheless. For example the romans with their mighty aqueducts, cleanliness rules in religion, drinking tea (needs boiled water) or beer/wine (alcohol desinfects), or being obsessed that evil witches dont poison your wells etc.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#108

Post by EGreg »

chimeracoder wrote: post #66
hardlianotion wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember that Roman toilets were often in the kitchen...

> I seem to remember that Roman toilets were often in the kitchen... Not unusual for buildings in Europe or the US built around the turn of the last century either. These days, they're typically renovated so that there's a wall in between and the bathroom door leads off of an incredibly narrow kitchen, but a hundred years ago, those were in the same room. (And those were the ones who were lucky, because they actually…

And a private kitchen!!

https://www.google.com/amp/porch.com/advice/brief-history-ki...

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#109

Post by EGreg »

sqeaky wrote: post #57
6d6b73 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, buckets and "out the window" are better than "everywhere"

Where is "out the window"? People are going to be walking through that and it will flow downhill towards the water table and into well water. "out the window" is "everywhere" for most purposes.

Better than shitting in people's pots and then loading them up with food and soup.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#110

Post by Pica_soO »

chiph wrote: post #30
Tharkun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long it took for westerners to stop throwing their "night soil" out the window and start installing and using toilets. What always struck me as strange is that the Romans had and used public toilets, but afterwards Europe went back to shitting in a bucket and throwing it out the window. Puzzling.

Around 1854. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb... Which about ten years later resulted in the Victorians building over 100 miles of sewers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system

You know something, Jon Snow! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpzHHbFrHY
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