Rose George

Rules governing defecation, hygiene, and pollution exist in every culture at every period in history. It may in fact be the foundation of civilization: What is toilet training if not the first attempt to turn a child into an acceptable member of society?

The Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), which controls the living environment on shuttles and on the International Space Station, doesn't have the luxury of disposal: discharging trash into space has long been judged a bad idea.

The more ships have grown in size and consequence, the more their place in our imagination has shrunk.

Who cares about the men who steered your breakfast cereal through winter storms? How ironic that the more ships have grown in size and consequence, the less space they take up in our imagination.

Because sanitation has so many effects across all aspects of development - it affects education, it affects health, it affects maternal mortality and infant mortality, it affects labor - it's all these things, so it becomes a political football. Nobody has full responsibility.

Felixstowe, the United Kingdom's largest port, stops work only for Christmas Day and for crane-toppling Force 9 gales.

What they have done in Japan, which I find so inspirational, is they've brought the toilet out from behind the locked door. They've made it conversational. People go out and upgrade their toilet. They talk about it. They've sanitized it.