The 2024 World Toilet/Portable Sanitation Day theme is Toilets — A Place for Peace, which highlights the individual impacts of lacking access to sanitary toilets.

While portable sanitation may not always get its due, it holds the lives and well beings of billions of people in its hands. Read these facts, shared by UN Water in honor of World Toilet Day.

  1. Globally, the number of people living without safely managed sanitation: 3.5 billion. Number of people still practicing open defecation: 419 million. 
  2. Globally, the number of people living without safely managed drinking water: 2.2 billion. Number of people drinking surface water: 115 million.
  3. Number of people without basic hygiene services: 2 billion, including 653 million without any sort of facility. 
  4. 1,000 children under 5 years old die every day due to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene. 
  5. 1.4 million lives per year could be saved by improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene.
  6. Wastewater is undertreated: 42% of household wastewater is not treated properly.
  7. Wastewater is underutilized: Only 11% of the estimated wastewater produced is reused.  
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