Let's talk crap. Seriously.
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0:01 - 0:05Let's talk dirty.
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0:05 - 0:07A few years ago, oddly enough,
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0:07 - 0:10I needed the bathroom,
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0:10 - 0:13and I found one, a public bathroom,
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0:13 - 0:16and I went into the stall,
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0:16 - 0:19and I prepared to do what I'd done most of my life:
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0:19 - 0:24use the toilet, flush the toilet, forget about the toilet.
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0:24 - 0:26And for some reason that day, instead,
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0:26 - 0:28I asked myself a question,
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0:28 - 0:32and it was, where does this stuff go?
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0:32 - 0:36And with that question, I found myself plunged
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0:36 - 0:40into the world of sanitation --
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0:40 - 0:41there's more coming -- (Laughter) —
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0:41 - 0:46sanitation, toilets and poop,
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0:46 - 0:49and I have yet to emerge.
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0:49 - 0:51And that's because it's such an enraging,
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0:51 - 0:54yet engaging place to be.
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0:54 - 0:58To go back to that toilet,
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0:58 - 1:01it wasn't a particularly fancy toilet,
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1:01 - 1:02it wasn't as nice as this one
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1:02 - 1:05from the World Toilet Organization.
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1:05 - 1:09That's the other WTO. (Laughter)
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1:09 - 1:13But it had a lockable door, it had privacy, it had water,
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1:13 - 1:15it had soap so I could wash my hands,
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1:15 - 1:18and I did because I'm a woman, and we do that.
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1:18 - 1:24(Laughter) (Applause)
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1:24 - 1:26But that day, when I asked that question,
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1:26 - 1:29I learned something, and that was that I'd grown up thinking
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1:29 - 1:31that a toilet like that was my right,
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1:31 - 1:34when in fact it's a privilege.
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1:34 - 1:392.5 billion people worldwide have no adequate toilet.
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1:39 - 1:43They don't have a bucket or a box.
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1:43 - 1:48Forty percent of the world with no adequate toilet.
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1:48 - 1:50And they have to do what this little boy is doing
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1:50 - 1:53by the side of the Mumbai Airport expressway,
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1:53 - 1:56which is called open defecation,
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1:56 - 1:59or poo-pooing in the open.
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1:59 - 2:01And he does that every day,
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2:01 - 2:04and every day, probably, that guy in the picture
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2:04 - 2:06walks on by,
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2:06 - 2:09because he sees that little boy, but he doesn't see him.
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2:09 - 2:11But he should, because the problem
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2:11 - 2:14with all that poop lying around
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2:14 - 2:17is that poop carries passengers.
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2:17 - 2:21Fifty communicable diseases like to travel in human shit.
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2:21 - 2:23All those things, the eggs, the cysts,
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2:23 - 2:26the bacteria, the viruses, all those can travel
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2:26 - 2:30in one gram of human feces.
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2:30 - 2:33How? Well, that little boy will not have washed his hands.
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2:33 - 2:36He's barefoot. He'll run back into his house,
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2:36 - 2:39and he will contaminate his drinking water and his food
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2:39 - 2:41and his environment
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2:41 - 2:43with whatever diseases he may be carrying
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2:43 - 2:49by fecal particles that are on his fingers and feet.
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2:49 - 2:51In what I call the flushed-and-plumbed world
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2:51 - 2:54that most of us in this room are lucky to live in,
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2:54 - 2:57the most common symptoms associated with those diseases,
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2:57 - 3:00diarrhea, is now a bit of a joke.
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3:00 - 3:03It's the runs, the Hershey squirts, the squits.
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3:03 - 3:05Where I come from, we call it Delhi belly,
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3:05 - 3:08as a legacy of empire.
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3:08 - 3:12But if you search for a stock photo of diarrhea
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3:12 - 3:14in a leading photo image agency,
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3:14 - 3:16this is the picture that you come up with.
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3:16 - 3:18(Laughter)
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3:18 - 3:23Still not sure about the bikini.
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3:23 - 3:26And here's another image of diarrhea.
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3:26 - 3:29This is Marie Saylee, nine months old.
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3:29 - 3:31You can't see her, because she's buried
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3:31 - 3:34under that green grass in a little village in Liberia,
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3:34 - 3:38because she died in three days from diarrhea --
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3:38 - 3:41the Hershey squirts, the runs, a joke.
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3:41 - 3:44And that's her dad.
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3:44 - 3:45But she wasn't alone that day,
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3:45 - 3:49because 4,000 other children died of diarrhea,
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3:49 - 3:52and they do every day.
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3:52 - 3:57Diarrhea is the second biggest killer of children worldwide,
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3:57 - 3:59and you've probably been asked to care about things
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3:59 - 4:03like HIV/AIDS or T.B. or measles,
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4:03 - 4:04but diarrhea kills more children
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4:04 - 4:08than all those three things put together.
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4:08 - 4:12It's a very potent weapon of mass destruction.
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4:12 - 4:15And the cost to the world is immense:
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4:15 - 4:18260 billion dollars lost every year
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4:18 - 4:21on the losses to poor sanitation.
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4:21 - 4:22These are cholera beds in Haiti.
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4:22 - 4:26You'll have heard of cholera, but we don't hear about diarrhea.
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4:26 - 4:28It gets a fraction of the attention and funding
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4:28 - 4:32given to any of those other diseases.
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4:32 - 4:34But we know how to fix this.
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4:34 - 4:38We know, because in the mid-19th century,
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4:38 - 4:40wonderful Victorian engineers
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4:40 - 4:43installed systems of sewers and wastewater treatment
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4:43 - 4:48and the flush toilet, and disease dropped dramatically.
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4:48 - 4:50Child mortality dropped by the most
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4:50 - 4:52it had ever dropped in history.
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4:52 - 4:55The flush toilet was voted the best medical advance
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4:55 - 4:58of the last 200 years by the readers of the British Medical Journal,
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4:58 - 5:01and they were choosing over the Pill, anesthesia,
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5:01 - 5:02and surgery.
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5:02 - 5:05It's a wonderful waste disposal device.
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5:05 - 5:08But I think that it's so good — it doesn't smell,
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5:08 - 5:11we can put it in our house, we can lock it behind a door —
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5:11 - 5:14and I think we've locked it out of conversation too.
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5:14 - 5:16We don't have a neutral word for it.
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5:16 - 5:18Poop's not particularly adequate.
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5:18 - 5:22Shit offends people. Feces is too medical.
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5:22 - 5:24Because I can't explain otherwise,
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5:24 - 5:28when I look at the figures, what's going on.
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5:28 - 5:30We know how to solve diarrhea and sanitation,
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5:30 - 5:33but if you look at the budgets of countries,
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5:33 - 5:35developing and developed,
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5:35 - 5:37you'll think there's something wrong with the math,
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5:37 - 5:40because you'll expect absurdities like
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5:40 - 5:43Pakistan spending 47 times more on its military
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5:43 - 5:45than it does on water and sanitation,
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5:45 - 5:48even though 150,000 children die of diarrhea
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5:48 - 5:50in Pakistan every year.
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5:50 - 5:52But then you look at that already minuscule
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5:52 - 5:54water and sanitation budget,
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5:54 - 5:58and 75 to 90 percent of it will go on clean water supply,
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5:58 - 6:00which is great; we all need water.
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6:00 - 6:02No one's going to refuse clean water.
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6:02 - 6:05But the humble latrine, or flush toilet,
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6:05 - 6:07reduces disease by twice as much
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6:07 - 6:09as just putting in clean water.
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6:09 - 6:11Think about it. That little boy
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6:11 - 6:13who's running back into his house,
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6:13 - 6:15he may have a nice, clean fresh water supply,
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6:15 - 6:19but he's got dirty hands that he's going to contaminate his water supply with.
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6:19 - 6:23And I think that the real waste of human waste
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6:23 - 6:25is that we are wasting it as a resource
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6:25 - 6:29and as an incredible trigger for development,
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6:29 - 6:31because these are a few things that toilets
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6:31 - 6:34and poop itself can do for us.
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6:34 - 6:37So a toilet can put a girl back in school.
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6:37 - 6:40Twenty-five percent of girls in India drop out of school
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6:40 - 6:44because they have no adequate sanitation.
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6:44 - 6:46They've been used to sitting through lessons
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6:46 - 6:48for years and years holding it in.
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6:48 - 6:51We've all done that, but they do it every day,
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6:51 - 6:54and when they hit puberty and they start menstruating,
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6:54 - 6:56it just gets too much.
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6:56 - 7:00And I understand that. Who can blame them?
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7:00 - 7:02So if you met an educationalist and said,
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7:02 - 7:04"I can improve education attendance rates by 25 percent
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7:04 - 7:07with just one simple thing,"
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7:07 - 7:10you'd make a lot of friends in education.
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7:10 - 7:12That's not the only thing it can do for you.
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7:12 - 7:15Poop can cook your dinner.
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7:15 - 7:17It's got nutrients in it.
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7:17 - 7:19We ingest nutrients. We excrete nutrients as well.
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7:19 - 7:21We don't keep them all.
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7:21 - 7:24In Rwanda, they are now getting
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7:24 - 7:2775 percent of their cooking fuel in their prison system
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7:27 - 7:30from the contents of prisoners' bowels.
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7:30 - 7:34So these are a bunch of inmates in a prison in Butare.
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7:34 - 7:36They're genocidal inmates, most of them,
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7:36 - 7:40and they're stirring the contents of their own latrines,
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7:40 - 7:43because if you put poop in a sealed environment, in a tank,
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7:43 - 7:45pretty much like a stomach,
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7:45 - 7:47then, pretty much like a stomach, it gives off gas,
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7:47 - 7:49and you can cook with it.
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7:49 - 7:52And you might think it's just good karma
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7:52 - 7:54to see these guys stirring shit,
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7:54 - 7:56but it's also good economic sense,
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7:56 - 7:58because they're saving a million dollars a year.
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7:58 - 8:00They're cutting down on deforestation,
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8:00 - 8:03and they've found a fuel supply that is inexhaustible,
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8:03 - 8:08infinite and free at the point of production.
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8:08 - 8:11It's not just in the poor world that poop can save lives.
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8:11 - 8:14Here's a woman who's about to get a dose
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8:14 - 8:15of the brown stuff in those syringes,
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8:15 - 8:17which is what you think it is,
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8:17 - 8:20except not quite, because it's actually donated.
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8:20 - 8:23There is now a new career path called stool donor.
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8:23 - 8:25It's like the new sperm donor.
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8:25 - 8:28Because she has been suffering from a superbug called C. diff,
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8:28 - 8:31and it's resistant to antibiotics in many cases.
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8:31 - 8:33She's been suffering for years.
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8:33 - 8:36She gets a dose of healthy human feces,
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8:36 - 8:41and the cure rate for this procedure is 94 percent.
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8:41 - 8:45It's astonishing, but hardly anyone is still doing it.
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8:45 - 8:47Maybe it's the ick factor.
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8:47 - 8:50That's okay, because there's a team of research scientists
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8:50 - 8:53in Canada who have now created a stool sample,
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8:53 - 8:56a fake stool sample which is called RePOOPulate.
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8:56 - 8:58So you'd be thinking by now, okay, the solution's simple,
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8:58 - 9:00we give everyone a toilet.
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9:00 - 9:02And this is where it gets really interesting,
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9:02 - 9:05because it's not that simple, because we are not simple.
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9:05 - 9:09So the really interesting, exciting work --
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9:09 - 9:12this is the engaging bit -- in sanitation is that
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9:12 - 9:14we need to understand human psychology.
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9:14 - 9:17We need to understand software
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9:17 - 9:19as well as just giving someone hardware.
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9:19 - 9:21They've found in many developing countries that
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9:21 - 9:23governments have gone in and given out free latrines
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9:23 - 9:26and gone back a few years later and found that they've
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9:26 - 9:30got lots of new goat sheds or temples or spare rooms
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9:30 - 9:32with their owners happily walking past them
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9:32 - 9:36and going over to the open defecating ground.
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9:36 - 9:39So the idea is to manipulate human emotion.
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9:39 - 9:41It's been done for decades. The soap companies did it
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9:41 - 9:43in the early 20th century.
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9:43 - 9:46They tried selling soap as healthy. No one bought it.
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9:46 - 9:50They tried selling it as sexy. Everyone bought it.
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9:50 - 9:52In India now there's a campaign
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9:52 - 9:54which persuades young brides
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9:54 - 9:57not to marry into families that don't have a toilet.
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9:57 - 10:00It's called "No Loo, No I Do."
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10:00 - 10:02(Laughter)
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10:02 - 10:04And in case you think that poster's just propaganda,
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10:04 - 10:06here's Priyanka, 23 years old.
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10:06 - 10:08I met her last October in India,
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10:08 - 10:12and she grew up in a conservative environment.
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10:12 - 10:15She grew up in a rural village in a poor area of India,
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10:15 - 10:19and she was engaged at 14, and then at 21 or so,
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10:19 - 10:21she moved into her in-law's house.
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10:21 - 10:23And she was horrified to get there and find
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10:23 - 10:24that they didn't have a toilet.
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10:24 - 10:25She'd grown up with a latrine.
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10:25 - 10:27It was no big deal, but it was a latrine.
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10:27 - 10:29And the first night she was there, she was told
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10:29 - 10:30that at 4 o'clock in the morning --
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10:30 - 10:33her mother-in-law got her up, told her to go outside
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10:33 - 10:36and go and do it in the dark in the open.
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10:36 - 10:38And she was scared. She was scared of drunks hanging around.
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10:38 - 10:41She was scared of snakes. She was scared of rape.
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10:41 - 10:44After three days, she did an unthinkable thing.
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10:44 - 10:45She left.
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10:45 - 10:47And if you know anything about rural India,
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10:47 - 10:50you'll know that's an unspeakably courageous thing to do.
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10:50 - 10:51But not just that.
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10:51 - 10:54She got her toilet, and now she goes around
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10:54 - 10:55all the other villages in India
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10:55 - 10:57persuading other women to do the same thing.
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10:57 - 11:01It's what I call social contagion, and it's really powerful
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11:01 - 11:03and really exciting.
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11:03 - 11:05Another version of this, another village in India
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11:05 - 11:07near where Priyanka lives
-
11:07 - 11:11is this village, called Lakara, and about a year ago,
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11:11 - 11:12it had no toilets whatsoever.
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11:12 - 11:14Kids were dying of diarrhea and cholera.
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11:14 - 11:19Some visitors came, using various behavioral change tricks
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11:19 - 11:22like putting out a plate of food and a plate of shit
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11:22 - 11:24and watching the flies go one to the other.
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11:24 - 11:26Somehow, people who'd been thinking
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11:26 - 11:28that what they were doing was not disgusting at all
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11:28 - 11:30suddenly thought, "Oops."
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11:30 - 11:32Not only that, but they were ingesting their neighbors' shit.
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11:32 - 11:35That's what really made them change their behavior.
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11:35 - 11:38So this woman, this boy's mother
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11:38 - 11:40installed this latrine in a few hours.
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11:40 - 11:43Her entire life, she'd been using the banana field behind,
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11:43 - 11:44but she installed the latrine in a few hours.
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11:44 - 11:48It cost nothing. It's going to save that boy's life.
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11:48 - 11:51So when I get despondent about the state of sanitation,
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11:51 - 11:53even though these are pretty exciting times
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11:53 - 11:56because we've got the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
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11:56 - 11:58reinventing the toilet, which is great,
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11:58 - 12:00we've got Matt Damon going on bathroom strike,
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12:00 - 12:04which is great for humanity, very bad for his colon.
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12:04 - 12:06But there are things to worry about.
-
12:06 - 12:09It's the most off-track Millennium Development Goal.
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12:09 - 12:11It's about 50 or so years off track.
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12:11 - 12:12We're not going to meet targets,
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12:12 - 12:16providing people with sanitation at this rate.
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12:16 - 12:19So when I get sad about sanitation,
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12:19 - 12:22I think of Japan, because Japan 70 years ago
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12:22 - 12:25was a nation of people who used pit latrines
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12:25 - 12:27and wiped with sticks,
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12:27 - 12:31and now it's a nation of what are called Woshurettos,
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12:31 - 12:32washlet toilets.
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12:32 - 12:34They have in-built bidet nozzles for a lovely,
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12:34 - 12:37hands-free cleaning experience,
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12:37 - 12:39and they have various other features
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12:39 - 12:42like a heated seat and an automatic lid-raising device
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12:42 - 12:45which is known as the "marriage-saver."
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12:45 - 12:46(Laughter)
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12:46 - 12:48But most importantly, what they have done in Japan,
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12:48 - 12:50which I find so inspirational,
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12:50 - 12:52is they've brought the toilet out from behind the locked door.
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12:52 - 12:54They've made it conversational.
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12:54 - 12:57People go out and upgrade their toilet.
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12:57 - 13:02They talk about it. They've sanitized it.
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13:02 - 13:06I hope that we can do that. It's not a difficult thing to do.
-
13:06 - 13:09All we really need to do
-
13:09 - 13:10is look at this issue
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13:10 - 13:15as the urgent, shameful issue that it is.
-
13:15 - 13:17And don't think that it's just in the poor world that things are wrong.
-
13:17 - 13:20Our sewers are crumbling.
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13:20 - 13:22Things are going wrong here too.
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13:22 - 13:25The solution to all of this is pretty easy.
-
13:25 - 13:26I'm going to make your lives easy this afternoon
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13:26 - 13:29and just ask you to do one thing,
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13:29 - 13:32and that's to go out, protest,
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13:32 - 13:34speak about the unspeakable,
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13:34 - 13:36and talk shit.
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13:36 - 13:38Thank you.
-
13:38 - 13:43(Applause)
- Title:
- Let's talk crap. Seriously.
- Speaker:
- Rose George
- Description:
-
It's 2013, yet 2.5 billion people in the world have no access to a basic sanitary toilet. And when there's no loo, where do you poo? In the street, probably near your water and food sources -- causing untold death and disease from contamination. Get ready for a blunt, funny, powerful talk from journalist Rose George about a once-unmentionable problem.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 14:01
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Let's talk crap. Seriously. | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Let's talk crap. Seriously. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Let's talk crap. Seriously. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Let's talk crap. Seriously. | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Let's talk crap. Seriously. | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Let's talk crap. Seriously. | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |