WTO, the World Toilet Organization

Admit it, the subject of toilets does lend itself to bathroom humour. It's hard to write about public toilets and not get some silly pun coming to mind.

But it's no joke when you have to go and there are no decent facilities. The WTO - World Toilet Organization - is doing something about this. They sound like the type of organization we should all support, attacking the worldwide issues of sanitation.

Tourists are just one group of underserviced toilet users. To tourists, the consequences are somewhere between inconvenience and embarassment. No one likes to think about filthy toilets, but in planning vacations, the quality and availability of sanitation can be a major concern and the spectre of unacceptable or absent facilities can rule out a destination altogether.

A British toilet scholar interviewed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently referred to the "toilet leash". It's true - trips are often planned according to the distance between usable toilets.

In Calgary, Canada, where I live, the quest for a public toilet is not an easy one. Our public transit stations were designed without toilets to avoid the cost of maintaining them. There is a fear that any toilet will invite vandalism, drug use, and all sorts of awful anti-social behaviour. Thus we are often left with only one option - to go into a shop or cafe and make a purchase so that we may earn the key to the secret chamber.

On the WTO's website, there are a number of articles about many different aspects of toilets and sanitation. Toilet design influences usability of course, but also the cleanliness and maintenance of the toilet. It is possible to design toilets which minimize the negatives.

In Europe there are still toilets with attendants present all the time. This has rarely been the case in North America where the public toilet is more of a self-serve operation. Why our public officials have such resistance to employing attendants is a mystery.

Well, not really. They claim it's too costly. That's bad economics, in my opinion. I wonder if there are any surveys showing how often people choose not to make a certain trip because of a lack of guaranteed clean toilets along the way. Those economic losses should be tallied, along with the cost in public health, street cleanliness, and the overall quality of life before the decision is made to resist setting up clean, accessible, supervised toilets for all to use and enjoy.

The best personalized license plate I have ever seen is "PB4UGO". Sage advice.