Seattle Culture
Take a Seat: World Toilet Day is Coming
The Gates Foundation plans to celebrate the day with a series of events
By Rob Smith November 13, 2024
It sounds like a bad joke: World Toilet Day is Nov. 16. But sanitation is a serious global issue, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working to flush away the stigma.
In celebration of World Toilet Day 2024, the Gates Foundation Discovery Center is hosting a day full of fun activities to raise awareness about the need for sanitation around the world. The United Nations says about 3.5 billion people live without safely managed sanitation.
Activities include toilet paper races (where contestants put an egg on a roll of slightly unrolled toilet paper and compete to roll it up); a water bar challenge to see if you can taste the difference between tap, bottled and filtered water; a poop toss, where contestants toss poop-shaped beanbags into a toilet; and a special exhibition called “A Better Way to Go: Toilets and the Future of Sanitation” that features innovations including reinvented toilets and art installations.
The theme of this year’s World Toilet Day is “toilets are a place for peace.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center is at 440 Fifth Ave. N. in Seattle adjacent to Seattle Center.
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