REPLAY. Our excrement, a market like the others? Watch the documentary “The Great Battle of the Toilets”

It is a colossal health, ecological and economic issue. who we concerns everyone, but which we hardly ever talk about: the feces. Yet each human being “produces” more than 70 kilos per year, or 550 million tonnes worldwide. An unsavory and yet essential subject, which the film-investigation by Swiss director Arnaud Robert takes up frankly and with humor. From the lack of access to dignified toilets for almost a billion people in developing countries to state-of-the-art laboratories dedicated to the treatment of human waste, The Great Toilet Battle explores the various issues related to this subject, among which is the profitability of faeces.

>> The documentary “The Great Battle of the Toilets” directed by Arnaud Robert can be viewed in replay on france.tv

The documentary shows in particular that few developing countries can finance a centralized sewer network, which pushes the inhabitants to relieve themselves in the open air. A practice which causes a large number of illnesses and which, as early as 2011, aroused the interest of Bill Gates, who embarked on the reinvention of latrines and their widespread in developing countries. Under the impulse of the founder of Microsoft, the UN included, in 2015, the eradication of open defecation in the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. A desire to ring the bell “toilet revolution”. Number companies have therefore taken up the subject, aware that theustrooms, vital for hygiene and health, can become a lucrative market.

Cheryl Hicks is one of the entrepreneurs who see faeces no longer as a cost, but as a resource and an investment. She directs the Toilet Board Coalition (TBC), a platform bringing together several multinationals that aim to solve the global sanitation crisis. The objective of the TBC: to collect excrement from poor countries and transform it into a renewable energy source such as biogas or electricity. But it comes up against the distrust of the States. “Governments are wary of companies that might prioritize profit over the vital interests of the poorest, says Cheryl Hicks. Getting rich on the backs of the poor is an argument we often hear. There is also skepticism about the possibility of making money from these new approaches.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought public health issues back to the fore, is an opportunity that private sector companies intend to seize to convince public authorities of the merits of their projects.