“Everyone poops,” declares the classic children’s book used by parents, including me, to help their kids understand what is a natural part of all animals’ lives.
“Everyone poops — and half the world could use toilets and the other half could use better ones” is the underlying declaration from “A Better Way to Go: Toilets and the Future of Sanitation,” an ongoing exhibit at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Discovery Center in Seattle.
The exhibit is an eye-opening look into a subject many would rather leave to someone else to worry about. Doulaye Kone is that guy.
A sanitation expert who joined the foundation in 2011, Kone is the head of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene team at the foundation, where he leads efforts to create access to safe sanitation for the 3.5 billion people who currently live without it. The foundation has spent $1.4 billion on those efforts since 2005.
Kone said the focus on sanitation fits with the overall mission of the Gates Foundation: improving health and avoiding child mortality.
The foundation is also known for its advocacy and work on vaccines, some of which are for diseases transmitted through contact with human waste.
Cleaner sanitation systems could potentially help prevent the need for vaccines in the first place, Kone said.
“Can the toilet be a ‘super vaccine’?” he said, during a GeekWire tour of the exhibit this week.
It’s a question he and the foundation and its global partners are desperate to find an answer for.
And while providing toilets and sanitation for underdeveloped communities is part of the solution, dealing with the aging infrastructure that the rest of the world relies on is also a concern, especially as systems will be tested by climate change.
“A Better Way to Go” walks through seven themes aimed at ultimately sharing the foundation’s vision for “resilient and sustainable sanitation.” Those themes illustrate:
- Biology of going: the science of human waste.
- How we go: how people go to the bathroom around the world.
- Where it goes: exploring sewered and un-sewered methods for dealing with waste.
- When it goes wrong: the challenges of unsafe waste handling and untreated sewage.
- No place to go: why a scarcity of toilets in some regions is a problem for women and girls.
- Better ways to go: reinvented toilets and crucial partnerships.
- Sanitation futures: a garden-like space featuring biosolid compost “poopariums.”
A number of interactive displays engage visitors throughout the exhibit, to break down the taboo of poo, if you will. There’s a word cloud full of different names for poop in different languages; a display of different (fake) poop styles to get people thinking about how their own biology starts the sanitation cycle; previously released videos of Bill Gates drinking waste water turned into clean drinking water; light-up graphics/maps that show where and how sanitation systems can fail; and a small box you can stick your nose in to see how a specially designed scent can cheaply tackle a big, stinky, latrine problem.
There’s also a drinking fountain fashioned out of a (never used) toilet in a display that’s meant to elicit strong reactions. I tried it. The water tasted fine. But honestly, the last time I bent my face that far down over a toilet was to deal with the drink(s) I had the night before rather than to get a fresh sip. So, I get the apprehension.
The exhibit ends in typical Gates fashion, with a showcase of innovative, technological solutions for the problem at hand as well as an optimistic portrayal of a world where humanity has met the sanitation challenge.
The entire walkthrough is intended not only as a way to promote the Gates Foundation’s efforts in this arena, but as an educational tool for young people and others who may not grasp all that goes into … going.
Beyond giggling at poop emojis, school kids I encountered during my visit seemed to be genuinely taken aback by the world of differences in sanitation experiences, and left to ponder what it might be like to grow up without traditional American comforts.
Patrick McMahon, a visitor services manager with the Discovery Center, said that even though poop and sanitation is not a topic we commonly talk about in open conversation, it’s something that everyone knows is a part of their life. Displaying the challenges and solutions associated with the topic can help affect change.
“Part of our goal, in terms of the Discovery Center, is to build awareness broadly, so that when and if there is an opportunity to take action in one’s own life, they might be more aware and thoughtful of a topic and in a better position to do that,” McMahon said.
Keep scrolling for more images from the exhibit:
