History of toilets

Presenter: And next we're talking about toilets, which aren't the most glamorous subject for a story, but they are important enough to have their own awareness day. Thursday 19 November is World Toilet Day, because a toilet is much more than just a bit of furniture with a really bad job – it's a lifesaver. Here's Matt to explain.

Matt: What would you say is the greatest invention of all time? Is it TV? Maybe cars or planes? How about the internet? Well, there's actually a pretty good argument that this should win the crown – the humble toilet. 

Believe it or not, toilets are lifesavers. Good job, toilet! They're one of the most important ways we can protect ourselves from disease.

Toilets in some form or another have been around for a really long time. The ancient Romans had this not-so-private setup, complete with a system of sewers. 

For hundreds of years, people in Europe did their business in chamber pots and afterwards chucked their waste out the window or into the street. Gross! 

Then, in the 1800s, flushing toilets became a big thing.

By then people had realised human waste can make us really sick, and toilets contain and remove that waste, which helps stop nasty diseases from spreading. But while we now know how important toilets are, there are still lots of people who can't use them. Around the world 2.4 billion people don't have access to a simple, hygienic toilet, and that's a big problem because those people then have to go in the open, where it's easy for disease to spread and where water sources can be easily contaminated.

That can make people really sick with things like vomiting and diarrhoea, and around one and a half million people, mostly kids, die every year because of it. But a lack of toilets isn't the only problem. Many also don't have soap or clean water to wash their hands with, and others haven't been taught why using a toilet is so important. 

That's why the United Nations helped to start World Toilet Day, to give people, especially kids, better access to toilets and clean water and teach them how to stop germs from spreading with videos like this.

Song: Let's take the poo to the loo. Let's take the poo to the loo … 

Matt: It's already making a big difference and saving lives. But the UN says there's still a lot more to do to flush away this problem for good. So this year on World Toilet Day, make sure you take the opportunity to celebrate the toilet for the smelly, but important, job it does.

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