International statistics (WHO and UNICEF 2000; WHO and UNICEF 2004) indicates that over 2.6 billion people in the world today are without any form of "improved sanitation". The real situation is even worse: the statistics include toilets that are so bad, or shared by so many people that it cannot be regarded as "improved sanitation". Over a billion of the 6 billion people in the world are served by sewerage systems but much of this sewerage is discharged into rivers, lakes and the sea with little or no treatment: Only about 30 % of 1.1 billion people connected to the sewer system have their sewage treated in an environmentally acceptable way (Matsui 2002), which effectively means that the excreta from the remaining, which is 5.7 billion people, are discharged directly into the environment – on the land and to the receiving water bodies.

www.petition4toilets.org