The Big Necessity: Uncovering the Global Sanitation Crisis and Its Impact on Humanity

Martin G. Nystrom: Rose George has proven she can write about anything with insight, depth, and empathy. She is one of the greatest!

United States on May 31, 2023

Amazon Customer: I cannot praise this book too highly.
In fact it should be mandatory reading in schools and government worldwide. The author has done commendable research and the results are by turns funny, horrifying and heartbreaking. You never think about it but our most basic human function can have a profound effect on our daily lives if it is not supported by effective sanitation, from education to disease control.

United Kingdom on May 27, 2021

WendyJT: Rose George is excellent. Her books are always wonderfully insightful, well researched and written in a way that follows a narrative, rather than a collection of bland facts. "Nine Pints" about blood was fab. "Deep Sea & Foreign Going" about the international shipping industry was excellent. This one - The Big Necessity really opened my eyes to things I had never thought of. Typically I thought that our Western toilets were the best solution to the problem of waste, but frankly, now I'm not so sure. In addition, I cannot understand why Japanese style toilets are not standard the world over. A fascinating book. Buy it. Read it. Change the way you think.

United Kingdom on Jun 26, 2020

Janie U: Who knew container ships could be interesting? I didn't, until I read the book that this author wrote on the subject. Her latest is about blood and I will get onto that one sometime but thought I might try this book first.
It was published 10 years ago and is 270 pages split into 10 chapters.
The start of the book hooked me straight away as the statistics are almost unbelievable. Sanitation is unavailable for so many people and is so important for health - the message is communicated clearly.
The book was written in 2008 and many of the facts/statistics which I'm sure were current at the time are now out of date. Numbers are used a lot and I would like to think that changes have been made in ten years - culture behaviour is hard to change though so maybe the approach to poo isn't any better now.
Some sections were fascinating and others less so, although when I felt my attention drifting I skimmed a few pages and found something that pulled me in again.
Rose George makes another "unsexy" topic interesting and her focus on the cultural differences in the handling of human waste is not an area that I've given much consideration to before. Although remember seeing a...

United Kingdom on Jun 08, 2019

Amazon Customer: Read it! Rose George is a grown-up who can face reality and deal with it. Heaven knows we need more like her. In my early teens I read an SF novel called "Garbage World". It made me think. Sixty years later, still reading and thinking. Now if only we could get more politicians to do likewise.The book is not all doom and gloom. It is fascinating in some respects and hopeful if enough people see the necessity of learning from history and other cultures. We need research and development in this area and that requires respect for scientists as well as authors. It also requires lots of money for science, entrepreneurs, and...AUTHORS. Buy the book!

Canada on Apr 06, 2018

Peer Sylvester: Nach dem tollen "Ninety Percent of Everything" wollte ich dann auch das andere Buch von Rose George lesen - Das Buch über Toiletten und, äh, Sanitärproblematiken. Ja, das ist ein ungewöhnliches Thema und eines über das man (wie George auch betont) nicht spricht. Dabei sollte man mehr darüber wissen, denn der Umgang mit dem, was die Toilette runtergespühlt wird ist nicht ganz einfach. Und George beschäftigt sich sehr intensiv, aber immer gut lesbar mit der Problematik.
Vom Stil, Aufbau und Qualität erinnert sie (und das ist als hohes Lob zu verstehen) an Mary Roach: Man merkt, wie gut alles recherchiert ist, man merkt, dass sich George selbst für die Fragen interessiert und sie geht in verschiedene Richtungen und deckt viele Teilaspekte ab. Der Schwerpunkt des Buches liegt zwar bei der Sanitärproblematik in armen Ländern, aber es geht auch um Japanische Toilettenkultur, Chinesische Biogasproduktion, um die Frage ob Düngemittel aus Kot wirklich unproblematisch ist und um den Aufbau und die Geschichte der Kanalisation.
Man mag sich vielleicht nicht unbedingt für das Thema interessieren, aber es lohnt sich dennoch das Buch anzufangen!

Germany on Feb 06, 2018

Noemata: Every human being must eat food, drink beverages, and eliminate the fraction of the food and beverages that the body does not consume as fuel or use as building blocks. There are millions of books written about the food; there are obsessions about wine and liquor, and about soft drinks and water, and no shortage of literature and advertising about beverages. But most of us suppress thoughts about what happens to the fraction of the food and beverages that we eliminate; we just want it gone.

The Big Necessity is essentially a documentary book about a topic from which most want to change the subject. But it is a topic that cannot be ignored for long. How, then, does the compiler of the documentary manage to hold our attention?

Rose George does it with a light touch, a dose of humor. A recitation of statistics, a presentation of the mechanics of moving and treating human waste -- if that were all this book accomplished, the reader would put down the book before completing the first five pages, and the volume itself soon would become part of the waste disposal problem. So the text is laced with anecdotes, vignettes that make the reader want to grab a family member or...

United States on Jun 21, 2011

James Charnock: When I was young and living in very rural farm country and adventuring in the woods or hills and had to take a dump, I did what everyone else did: squatted, made some crap, wiped myself with a few leaves or a handful of grass, and moved on. (If the foregoing language disturbs you, then don't read this book; it's just as graphic, especially in the latter part.)

Now, imagine the teeming, close-living tens of millions in the slums and cities of developing countries--and even growing India--where, today, open defecation (that's the "polite" word, which is not that often used in the book) is the socially acceptable and often economically-necessary thing to do. Because it's cheap. There are no sewer systems, few toilets or even working public or private pit latrines. And where does this excreta go--be it India, Africa, China, Tibet, Mexico and even lesser sanitary places? Into the streets, ponds, rivers, oceans and even drinking water. Multi-tons of it everyday.

In some African countries, Tanzania and Kenya are two examples, the cheapest latrine is a plastic bag: "defecate, wrap, and throw. Anywhere will do, though roofs are a favorite" (pg. 210). Millions upon millions of...

United States on Apr 14, 2009

ealovitt: What is the cheapest toilet in developing countries? It is a plastic bag. "Kenyans call them helicopter toilets. Tanzanians prefer flying toilets. Whatever the name, the technique is the same..." Go. Wrap. Throw.

The plastic bag is one step up from open defecation, which according to the author, is still widely practiced in India.

We live in what the author calls a `flushed and plumbed' nation. It is hard to believe that 2.6 billion people must do without a toilet--what the U.N. delicately refers to as `access to clean water.' However, we Americans shouldn't be congratulating ourselves on our bathroom habits. Really advanced countries like Japan think that toilet paper is gross. "Japanese toilets can, variously, check your blood pressure, play music, wash and dry your [back and front parts] by means of an in-toilet nozzle that sprays water and warm air, suck smelly ions from the air, switch on a light for you...put the seat lid down for you (a function known as the `marriage-saver'), and flush away your excreta without requiring anything as old-fashioned as a tank."

"The Big Necessity" is a serious book about "the unmentionable world of human waste and why it...

United States on Feb 01, 2009