Aussie loos 'on the nose' | Gladstone Lifestyle News | Health, Fashion, Food and Wine in Gladstone

© iStockphoto.com/Thomas Bendy

Poll

How do you rate your loo?

This poll ended on 30 April 2010.

World class

11%

Among the best in the country

17%

Above average (I've seen worse)

26%

In need of a serious renovation

30%

No better than a bucket

3%

What toilet?

11%

This is not a scientific poll. The results reflect only the opinions of those who chose to participate.

We're tops at sport and our beaches are among the world's best - but our loos are a bit on the nose.

Europe, according to the Australian Toilet Organisation, offers gold class public facilities in which to spend a penny (or euro).

"If you compare our public toilets to countries overseas, our public toilets are quite good (and) there are a reasonable number of them," spokesman Scott Chapman told AAP in Melbourne.

"But could they be better, could they be cleaner, could there be more of them? Yes - not only in rural and remote areas but also in metropolitan areas as well."

Volunteer squatters, armed with newspapers and toilet rolls, brought the topic of loos to the forefront in Melbourne's central business district on Thursday, being World Toilet Day.

Mr Chapman said that although Australian toilets were no match for Europe's premium loos, our facilities were better than those in the United States.

"We're ahead of America by a long way. Because of crime, America has closed a lot of public toilets," he said.

The organisation, along with WaterAid Australia, wants to raise awareness that 2.5 billion people around the world have no access to decent toilets.

This causes a raft of hygiene problems, which often lead to death.

"We need to get across that diarrhoea takes the lives of more than 4,000 children each day, or 1.6 million every year, and that one third of the world's population still lack somewhere safe and clean to defecate," Mr Chapman said.

The problem of unhygienic toilet facilities is right on our doorstep in East Timor.

WaterAid Australia chief executive Adam Laidlaw said 5,000 children aged under five die in East Timor every year.

"Over 22 per cent of those (deaths) will be from diarrhoea, which is because there is not a safe place to go to the toilet," he said.

"We have all got to get together and make sure that sanitation is prioritised by the East Timor government."

The Australian government has allocated $300 million of its foreign aid budget to the provision of clean water, toilets and sanitation services.