‘Opening the lid’ on toilet innovation: Q&A with author Chelsea Wald
A new book, “Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet,” published on April 6, looks at the environmental and public health case for developing better solutions to deal with human waste.
Science writer Chelsea Wald examines the impacts of human sanitation on our climate, ecosystems and each other around the world, from rural communities to cities swelling with human populations.
In this “quest,” Wald finds solvable problems, if society as a whole can come together to find solutions tailored to specific contexts.
Toilets: They’re not any easy subject to discuss. Even though eliminating waste from our bodies is an essential function we all must do, talking about how we deal with that waste as a society, along with the intertwined issues of public health and environmental impacts, doesn’t make for easy conversation.