Happy World Toilet Day!

No, that's not a joke.

Nov. 19 is World Toilet Day — declared by the United Nations in 2001. The goal is to call attention to the 3.4 billion people who live without "safely managed sanitation" and the more than 300 million people who engage in "open defecation" — doing their business in the great outdoors.

Now, it sure would be great if everyone on Earth had a toilet. However, unless that toilet is connected to an effective and sanitary sewage disposal system, it would merely be a porcelain throne.

"What the world needs is not toilets," says Dr. Stephen Luby , a professor of medicine at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. "Low-income communities need effective sewers and sanitation that separate their water and

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