This is ninety nine percent, invisible, I'm roman Mars every time you go to the bathroom. You should thank Alexander coming gradually The whole story about em, because Alexander coming was the first person to patent a flexible toilet. He didn't invent the flush doin it, but he did connected to an essay pipe which uses water to stop Sir gas coming up its thinking up your home and before Alexander coming that used to happen a lot. Whatever was underneath the toilet could come back up, people didn't like bad smells, but they also thought that bad smells carried disease. That's how the flush came about That's Chelsea Walled, I'm the author of pipe dreams, the urgent global quest to transform the toilet, the first hold it took.

While to catch on, but once it did, it became part of a system we still use today, which Chelsea calls the gold standard. Here's how it works. Once deposited into the toilet. New flesh. It down goes into a sewer system that runs under the city and their combined where water and with everyone else's poop and anything anyone puts into their sinks and their toilets and their showers and their washing machines and the dishwashers flows. To a treatment plants and in the treatment plants bacteria help to clean up the sewage treatment plant produces cleaned up wastewater, which is usually return to our water supply and it filters on all the solids. The first toilet sewer system and the treatment plant make up the gold standard and a lot of ways. It's a really good system, toilet technology, the toilet systems that people's lives

I lived in the nineteenth and early twentieth century that we still use today fundamentally work very while keeping our cities clean and keeping us healthy but look Josie while didn't write. A whole book about how towards a great the gold standard, has some big limitations. I like to think of it as a paradox. I am very happy for the toilet that I haven't been able to use my whole life, but the paradox is that

systems are wasteful and they are not suited to the challenges of the twenty first century. The problem with toilets pencils who walk so the first woman, is pretty ferko. But what are the problems which I think everybody would know by now that toilets waste water they use fresh turntable water most of the time to flush, are poor, which seems silly the reason that they do this it uses waters for two purposes. One is to wash out the ball and carry away the poop and then the other reason is to see all the toilet to prevent your gases from coming back up all toilets use something from three point: five to seven gown

when's to flash. So it's like a waterfall of water of Rez Water used to flush down p dot m, which is crazy, cuz, that's just liquid or your poop and some household. You know that can be a quarter of their household water consumption is just toilet. Flushing new innovations and in recent decades have brought that down. The current federal standard is one point: six gallon and low flow toilets are are lower than that, but one thing that people might not think about is that more and more people are getting toilets every year as they hook up to piped water, and not just in the? U S less than the? U S but around the world. This is a growing issue worldwide. One estimate is that people use for

a billion gallons of fresh water to flush toilets, which is six times the daily water consumption of Africa. That's one portion of the worldwide wastewater usage

which is a hundred trillion gallons of wastewater, which is a number that only going up that number my increased by fifty percent by twenty fifty. We don't have that water to spare. So by that time, half of the world's population is going to be living in water stressed regions, which means that at least part of the year they won't have enough water people want to hook up to flush, toilets that use water. They are a symbol of economic development. There a symbol of progress and success and because we don't have an alternative really. That also represents that people they're gonna, continue to hook up to flush toilets when they can. In the book you point out some new kinds of toilets, reduce our water usage,

Can you tell me about that? If we don't want to use water in our toilets, are we want to use much less water in our toilet? We have dry toilets. Those are toilets that don't use any water and you might use a cover material over at you can kind of think like an outhouse can be a drive toilet or a bucket, and some cases people have adopted those they're not terribly popular Firstly is it, you know their associated more with a heavy lives, Tyler or a survivalist lifestyle. Perhaps there are pressure toilets, also these suck or force The waste out of the bull- and I think that these are growing and popularity they're starting to be installed and more more places. There are new coatings for toilets under development,

and let the coop slide out of them more so there you don't need as much water to scour the toilet in and get all the poop out of. It depended more self cleaning. There is also a toilet under development that uses like us. Sheila to stoop around the toilet ball, and then it doesn't require water as well so there's a lot of creative ideas and a development. All these ideas I mean they seem futuristic, but on the other hand, there something saw logical about them. It's almost as if, if you just take the time to think about it, you might think it up yourself. You know how are you gonna get this poop out at the ball? Ok I'll get us bachelor, you know, so I think it is it either. There's a lot of clever.

engineering in it, but there's also just a question of thinking outside the toilet, but outside the box pseudo Withers reg to how to deal with this problem the first rule. It is not the most efficient way to deal with our waste, but you could replace it with another kind of toilet, but then there's the sewer system Most cities build their server for for a long time ago, before they had big increase in population and its a much bigger problem, the deal with from the toilet, because a sewer system is too expensive too replace key talk about why or sewers or getting overwhelmed. When you add rainwater in there this shores have to handle just like a much. Bigger flow of water and tat can overwhelm the shore

and it can also have a wound: the treatment plants at the end of the shores and that's why it a lot of these systems are designed to release raw sewage into waterways. During these events, and because of climate change these events are becoming more and more frequent and bigger, and so cities are dealing with me, more of these wet weather events, where there they are unfortunately, release saying raw sewage into their look Waters is not something they want to do, but it's how the systems are designed and fixing that is really expensive. you write about I've been any Anna, were they or Over four was a lot pretty much. Every time there was like a tenth of an entire rain, and this is where I was really surprised when a peak booted showed up and oh yeah. I was writing bad section when he was running for president, the whole time? I was thinking gosh when this book

I have no idea, you know what this sections going to mean to people here. He is now the Secretary of Transportation say so I guess it worked out. Ok to one of the problems of people judge was trying to solve what was this idea of storm water, overwhelming the sewage system and find out the dangers of rivers. And what was the solution? There said they have been at the forefront of developing smart sewers sensors and sewers disorders are definitely an old tack, but they are very hard to put sensors in. So you know, as ever. in cities has gotten a kind of wired up sewers, have been a little bit slower because it's very curves environment in there, but scientists said Noted aim and some other universities worked out how to put sensors in to the sewers there

And get a better handle on what was happening in the sewers that they had and when it turned out was that there was extra capacity in the sewers they didn't know about anymore really using during these events, and they were able to put em devices. And that would then better use that capacity automatically during these weather events, and just in that way, by better using the source that they had reducing the number of overflows is not a perfect solution because they still do have overflows, but it just use the capacity of the shores a lot better and This kind of sewers transfer technology is now really growing.

Let me there's a lot of cities interested in it and and installing it to eliminate these sure overflows. Thus, I've been shows us how we can take better advantage of the tourism infrastructure that we have in place in our cities. It's not just a question of better using The capacity of those sewers or investing in them in a way that makes them work better, I'm in the way that they intended, but we can also use them in new ways: One issue is overflows and the other problems with sewers are fat perks. I mean these get. It covered a lot in the news, but could you describe a fat burg for people who don't know about them? so without vergoose, the other, the other problem of of mixing everything

to the sewer. By now. I hope you ve heard the blessing wet wipes is bad. A lot of people haven't heard that yet, but but there's these in a growing trend towards having these adults, wet wife's, adult version of baby wave. Thank us instead of toilet paper and people are flashing them like toilet paper. Those go down into the system along with any trial, soon there and they mix with the Greece that people restaurants as well poor into the source- and this does some crazy chemistry down there and forms creeps into a horrible blob, and it can get really hard like a rock, even Oregon. It can take all kinds of different forms and and textures and it just grows and grows person there and needles in everything until it can clogged a sewer and that's what you know has been called a fat Burke

hundreds clog up London's hundred and fifty rolled sewer network, none bigger than white shovel FAT Burg in EAST London, a hundred and thirty ton monster crews work four nine weeks above ground and down below breaking it up, then sucking it up and tracking it away. It's really. It's just costing cities huge amounts of money in this problem and its also really a horrible thing for sewer workers to have to go down and clean up anything people dont. Think about that part of it. You know that someone actually has said go down and clean up

ass to go into this. Your gas, as he is a pic acts at times of pressure hose and then get those things out of their. So that's why cities are sort of desperately telling residents to stop flushing the wet waves and to stop poor increase down there things I don't know how far the message is getting because they they they say it's gotten quite bad during the pandemic, especially the less for the process was the treatment plant work or the limitations of our water treatment process. O water discharges basically go into the sewers and do some regulation on industry about what can go in there, but you know pretty much anything can make its way into the sewers and flow to the waste water treatment plant. That makes a very difficult, but the basic

technology that used to treat the sewage which was designed more than a hundred years ago. Just isn't designed to eliminate a lot of these different kinds of pollution. Toxic chemicals and plastic pollution in the sewage that have been developed in the last hundred years and so wasteful plants have the choice of adding on more and more treatment, steps to filter out and eliminate these pollutants, which can be very expensive and love. Municipalities can't afford it or they end up discharging it into waterways? It is monitored by the EPA in the U S, but not for all of these substances just

a limited number of heavy metals and other substances, so that creates a problem. The central tension of all this is like. We have a toilet that mercifully, like removes us from our waste problem. You know in our house and kindly to a sewer. It removes it so efficiently. Reading it just goes away, I get, it does also disappears completely in it still their justice collecting fabric or is being released into a river or something to that effect. I also just thought tat it I'll just went away. I did imagine I mean to the extent that I thought about it. When I'm sure I wasn't really thinking, but am I thought you know, poop is biodegradable adjust. Yeah does disappears.

in the book. You talk about the problems with our conventional toilet system and you also visit some places. Trying different approaches like this one you describe as a subdivision experiment in snake, which is a city in the Netherlands. They have this new neutral technology, that's kind of mine blowing. How does that system work and in could you describe it I live in. The Netherlands was wasn't a far trip for me, but it was a few hours north, it's in housing, complex of two hundred units and each of these units has a vacuum toilet. So you might know vacuum toilets from aeroplanes or maybe boats, and you would not want one of those in your home, their really

their horrible and their loud, but icily people have developed really nice easy to use vacuum toilets. I used wine in the headquarters of the company that has developed this project alongside a university in funding partner. Those toilets, are they look mostly like a toilet. have these kind of glowing blue buttons and you press them in a little there's, a tiny bit of water in their which I don't even think the water has to be an there. It's just that it's described as a kind of security blanket it just makes people feel comfortable, and you know it's close. It opens, and it just goes whoosh and whatever you have put in their comes out the bottom and it's very concentrated and from there it flows to a treatment facility. That's on the premises of this housing development is the little house just in the center, you would not know what it was. You would think it was like the headquarters of this housing development or the wreck centres,

thing and in there is an anaerobic digestion her in which microbes turn this toilet waste into bio gas for the housing complex, so use in the EU but to heed the housing complex. So it's just like your poop as powering your home or heating your home, and they also add to that food from their thinks they are. Food grow leaders in their thinks, and they send that in there too, and that can be digested as well by the microbes pensioners, wastewater treatment, plants, use, aerobic, digestion and aerobic bacteria require a lot of oxygen, and so that requires a lot of energy to pump the oxygen through the sewage but an anaerobic digestion or does not require oxygen pump, and so it you,

is much less energy. In addition to creating energy there I mean it's really remarkable and when you hear about it, you think all this is the greatest thing in the world. Why does nobody do this and people from all world tour. This facility, and with the Mai that may be they changed their near their sewage and toilet systems, and then what happens? I ask that question people I was talking to you of all work on this system. Just told me in a very disappointed way. They can it's been very difficult. Everyone just goes home and we think what they do is they install conventional infrastructure? They just don't really trust that the system is going to work. They don't want to take the risk to find out if people were like the vacuum toilets, if the plumbers will be able to fix them if they can get all the regulatory stuff in mine and others just a lot of

barriers when you have a system that so widespread and so standard as the conventional system. To adopting something so novel I mean its disappointing that people don't wanna, try but toilet system them, but also you know using poop for energy. and really radical and maybe grows to a lot of people, and do you think that our own taboos and discomfort with our excreta makes it so that design innovation is more difficult. It's funny pause after spending years working on this topic in writing a book. It's a little hard for me to connect to my own sense of disgust around the topic. So it takes talking to other people for me to recall what it feels like to talk to you. No talk about

You need to be uncomfortable about talking about to open, I'm spreading it on my guard in whatever, of course, I think poop smells bad, but I don't. I don't have that same kind of disgust around it, but Guess I mean research shows that discusses a very strong motion. It is a problem that we know. As I was doing, this research came up again and again. Could people overcome the young factor and could the Yuck factor rear its head at a very inconvenient time? So say your halfway through a project or you have you know of fertilizer project going and you have invested all of this time and effort into it and then suddenly the public gets hold of it and their disgusted and you get shut down

something like that could happen. So there's a let the real fear of that. I think it's changing as people start to care more and more about the problems that innovators are trying to solve. I think that can counterbalance the disgust, but the discussed Israel factor.

The gold standard toward system is perfect, but there are still hundreds of millions of people who don't even have that. What is it like in areas of the world without a modern flushed with a system does usually something there, but it's a its informal or it's not organised, so you might have pit latrines, and the problem is that when those pillar trains, Philip people, have to call somebody to empty them. There's often not professionals Service or the professional service that does exist is too expensive, and so they call an informal workers, someone who's highly stigmatized, who comes in and dig it out and then leaves the contents from their pet latrine somewhere other than a treatment plant for sure, maybe even just whole next to the house and putting it they're dumping them in a waterway

so you have a really disorganized system. These are places where it's not easy to imagine, building the kinds of sore systems that we see in can cities nor, as I have described to mean our are sore systems necessarily big sewerage systems, the necessarily the best option. People. Working now as a hundred, mental improvement, making these pit latrines inch. A more organised system, so creating services that can safely empty them and then take them to treatment plants. That's that's a step that would go really far in the right direction.

and it requires a little bit of innovation, but really a lot of organisation and political well mainly to serve these informal areas that have very little infrastructure but another piece. You know where people don't have sewers. Currently, there's a lot of opportunity there to do something new in places that have not yet been able to afford these kinds of comprehensive sewerage systems. It is interesting that kind of just like a sort of transport problem issues I bring you know agreeable. We have one transport system which is a great deal moving things were system or you have people taking pockets of things. You know out in moving on to other places, essentially that it really is echoed systems and transport issue when you, when you get down to it right, yeah

so yeah yeah I've. How can you? How can you get the stuff someplace safe? There is the idea of these hyper local decentralized systems where everything can be kind of treated on the spot. The the Gates Foundation have their reinvent the toilet challenge, which encouraged research teams to do. You know come up with ideas for these kinds of of toilets that could neutralize the waste and create resources on the spot in places where there is no, Infrastructure I mean so far. Those are, are, you know still in development? Let's say you know it is. This is the big dream in the big dream, but worthy one. You know, and I think that the idea that the Gates Foundation had bill gates had that people kind of a leap, frog conventional system and get to something better,

go down that path, find a new and make a new one. I think that you know communities need to decide for themselves. You know how they want to organise their own waste and in part, or they need to be consulted in that as well. But it is a problem that still unsolved, I mean

obviously, if it were some of the herd, we wouldn't be talking about it, but I think we're say increasing attention to it and a lot of different kinds of solutions appearing enough that there is reason to be helpful. If I weren't talk about another equity issue, around toilets, which is access to public toilets, the number apologize around the world has gone way down, especially in the United States via so public trail. Its are a big cost to a city. My understanding is there used to be quite a lot of public,

oh, it's in the: U S, but they were pay. Toilets problem was the women paid, but the men didn't have to, and so in the nineteen seven days people started pointing that out as being sexist, which it was and demanded a fruitful it's for everybody which they got, except for the fact that that meant that cities didn't really want it keep up those free toilets, the they just turn into big burdens for cities and city started, taking them out and in the public toilets that did exist were kind of cross and nobody wanted to really use them. As a result, our cities are really depleted of public toilets and it's it's a really big problem.

really for everybody who wants to go out into public life. Although people who you know the privilege of doing so, can often walk into a cafe and use it, but there really are a lot of people who don't have that privilege? You won't be invited to a cafe and allowed to use the toilet there. We lying on a private system is like of public toilets are basically in private, cafes and Starbucks, and hotel lobbies and things. that I've ever when I travel. I often where soon when I travel and one where things are suited for do, is you can walk in any place news the bathroom assurances yeah and believe that you ve noticed that feeling this year

I was yet. I was sort of like, as I was reading this part of my measuring their strangle, on which your good public toilets there well maintained are just part of the sea of a structure and mean oh, maybe NEO, coupled with politicians at or something to that effect. It seems like that would make the world just a tremendously better place at every city about replace city planners have forgotten now, like the people. have basic bodily functions, even when their outsider- I don't know you can't always run home. Then some people don't have homes. One option is to actually pay private establishments to open their toilets up to the public that has worked in some places, although with a pandemic without these establishments closed. You know if you can see the limitations of that what happens after hours. There is also the possibility of combining toilets, as you said, maybe with public transit, but maybe with a private business, but that the toilet,

leads, and so you have to tell the public toilet, but it's also If they are like a stand for coffee or something like that, you know they sell things alongside of it. In that helps, fund the toilets and people want to bring some people want to bring back pay toilets. Seen us think that people be willing to pay a little bit for a toilet and I think with apps. You know that that easier have to carry render a corridor. You know have have exact change or something for the toilet, but but you can just tap your fun and use the toilet, and then you could provide something like toilet stamps for people who couldn't afford it. That sounds promising. me in the book. You were out in ideal eyes, vision for toilets and you call it loot hope here, which is pretty good with what does Lou Tokyo look like yeah, so am I came up for the fact that the concept of loot Toby, I would the place where are toilets, allow us to live in

a more harmony with each other and with nature, and one of the points that's really important. to me in this book is that there is no one type of toilet in lieu Tokyo, but is, in fact the kaleidoscope of TAT, So we have this notion that has come down to us from the path of what the toilet or what the ideal toilet system as which is what we ve been talking about. The flush toilet connected to the sewer system connected to centralize treatment plant, but what we really need for their future is a range of different kinds of toilet systems that are appropriate for a different place. This with different resources with different needs, and that is really being how we gonna get to something likely Tokyo where Gower toilets are healthier. Horses,

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so or domain? So we just, but was a book last year called the ninety nine percent of US passivity and the first chapter. The book is about utility markings and how underground utilities are color coded, like the color oranges used indicator for communications infrastructure and read, is for electrical and you write about lavender. There are lavender utility markings and also lavender pipes. What are those for? The purple is, for nine part, a ball water. It's possible cheer, take the water that comes out of a wastewater treatment, plant and

clean it up to a level where it can be re used. Very often, you know it is very clean, its possibly even cleaner than the water body that it gets discharged into at times more and more we're going to sea water scarcity in our cities, and so utilities are raising this water and some Way and non portable means you don't drink it, but it's still very useful for things like irrigation industrial uses event, flushing toilets this color purple. It's a third of a really nice lavender color is the color that arose as the best color. I'm in Irvine, California think I'm a manager at the wastewater treatment plant who is colorblind found that it stood out and in the really the reason you wanted of different color pipes is because you know you

one a plumber to accidentally plumb, the non potable water into a drinking fountain say so. That's why you color coded people, have a hard time of your idea of drinking recycle war. Lots of people would probably few honourable drink a glass of water if there were told that he used to be wastewater from someone's toilet. But you read: the book were indirectly drinking recycle water overtime. How does it work? So? What has been done to now is often. Instead of feeding it directly into the drinking water system, they will use the water to say, recharge groundwater, and then it gets pull back up into the drinking water system, and so it goes to this Inter intermediaries step which is in a sort of unnecessary bud. Is far faster cleansing the mind at least other people

We are thinking about I'm sort of clever ways of bringing this concept to people's attention like using this water. To me beer. So beer uses a lot of water. It's not water. Efficient so utilities have been working with these brewers to deliver them this view. Clean water, actually in in some cases it sort of like very tasteless water, because they cleaned its much of all of minerals and stuff. You know they get. They have a sort of clean palette on which to make this beer. I dont know if this is apocryphal or not, but I mean I've heard many

times that, for example, the medieval period people drink beer and set of water because it was safer. So maybe there's also a kind of a long history of thinking that the brewing process is a kind of cleansing process for liquid, and also you know when you drink beer get p more, so it sort of got a circular logic to it is because we lived in a period of time of abundant, I think, and that might be shifting. Do you think it's possible to change our thinking about this stuff globally? Concerning the new climate change them

Are you hopeful yeah? I think I'm hopeful about it. I mean it depends on the day how her voice global situation that we find ourselves then in general, is not such a hard topic for me to cover as an environmental journalist, because you know plastic pollution, kind of depresses me, because every time I use a piece of plastic, I feel guilty and bad about it. But I don't really have to feel bad about pooping. I mean it's just something every animal does, and so it's all opportunity there is room for a lot of different solutions. It is a problem that we have to confront. Ass. A species is also hyper local. So it's like. scales go from extremely welcome, like you're on private toilet and what you can do there,

to the global and every scale in between I found in my reporting people at others scales, doing all the kind of work, maybe not everyone's paying attention to that, but it is going on and I think the more that people die, what they're doing into larger global issues that are really concerning all of us. The more that, though, innovations can take hold. Thank you so much for book for talker. Might thanks so much for having made this was really fun. Josie Walled as the author of the book pipe dreams, the urgent global quest to transform the toilet, get it wherever fine book social Ninety nine percent, invisible was breezes week by crisper, ruby music by our director of Sound John Rio, sound mixed by Andy Christians, daughter

producer, is Delaney Hall. Turkmenistan is the digital director thrust. A team includes Vivian lay Joe Rosenberg Fitzgerald, Crisper Johnson washroom Adon Katy me so vehicle Oscar and me, roman Mars. We are part of this sure and serious exam podcast family now headquarters, six blocks north in beautiful Uptown, Oakland. California You can find the shown towards cousins about the show on Facebook. He entreated me a roman Mars and the show at nine IP org on instant, and read it to you can find others. Rose. I love from stitches on our website at nine, a m dot org, including reaganomics, uncovering the hidden stories the world through the lens of economics, find linked to it every past episode of ninety nine p, I at nine a m p. I dot org,

so don't have an audio logo payments that up my email. Yet I think that might be the problem, so I did it. I did it. Did it at that? I don't do that at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at, at at at at does. Did her stick during your head sticker stature in your head sticker stood you in your head, did it It did at at at at at at induced areas. Exam didn.