On this week's Earth Beat we mark World Toilet Day. Those of you who have a toilet rarely spare a thought for how the lowly lavatory increases your personal health and well being. But having access to a toilet can make the difference between life and death.

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We’re going to take a tour of toilets covering three continents - from the lowest tech to the newest environmentally friendly models. But first – here’s the a 60 second overview of the loo from my colleague Fiona Campbell.
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Diseases caused by bad sanitation kill more 2.2 million people and most of the victims are under 5 years old. Toilets  - or a lack of them - are a major problem in slum areas around the world. So people are left to come up with their own solutions.

The flying toilet
Kibera, on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, is where you will find the so-called “flying toilet”. Here’s how it works: Poo is put in a bag and the bag is flung as far away from your own home as possible. Our reporter Michael Kaloki went to find out more.
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Biogas from human waste
One place where people are reluctant to talk toilets is India. Up until relatively recently, it was the job of the lowest caste - so-called scavengers - to dispose of human waste. Bindeshwar Pathak comes from an upper class family – but he took it upon himself to release people from this unpleasant task. More recently Mr Pathak perfected a human waste plant which generates bio-gas which can be used for heating, cooking and electricity. 
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Keep your waste to yourself
Now, from India we whisk you over to Europe for another stop on our toilet tour. This time our destination is a holiday cottage in Belgium. The cottage belongs to Thijs Westerbeek, our regular reporter on Earth Beat. Thijs has installed an off-grid lavatory. I was curious to know how his toilet works without being connected to the sewage system.
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Urine-powered cars, soon a reality
We started off the show with toilet problems – and now we’ve got an invention that may well redefine lavatory waste as a resource. Hybrid cars don’t run on fossil fuels – they use hydrogen. But hydrogen has to be extracted from water, methane and other fossil fuels, a process that uses lots of energy. Gerri Botte is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Ohio. She has invented an electrode that can create large amounts of cheap hydrogen from urine.
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Watch Gerri Botte demonstrate the technology behind the urine-powered cars:

Traffic sounds driving whales insane
Sound travels well in water. Think of the sensitive hearing of a whale. The addition of man-made sounds have turned some parts of the ocean into the noise equivalent of a heavy metal concert. But Dr Patrick Miller of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews says the biggest noise problem for these mammals is the same as it is for city-dwelling humans: everyday traffic.
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Dolphin slaughter exposed by ‘Flipper trainer’
Ric O’Barry trained the dolphins that played Flipper in the 1960s TV show. He now regrets those days. O’Barry has been fighting a guerrilla war to call attention to the many dolphin hunts still active around the world. He now features in a documentary called The Cove, which claims to expose the annual slaughter of some 20,000 dolphins in the Japanese fishing town of Taiji.
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Watch the trailer for The Cove

Coop in New York recycles building materials
‘Waste not want not’ as the saying goes. And that’s the thinking behind Re-builders Source. It’s a discount retailer of spare building materials in the heart of the South Bronx in New York City. Reporter Zoe Sullivan to the offices to meet the people who run this unusual building cooperative.
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Rebuilding the Gaza Strip … with clay and rubble
Last years Israeli military operation in Gaza Strip destroyed thousands of Palestinian homes. People are trying to rebuild their lives now, but that is not easy since Israel places heavy restrictions on goods moving in and out of this area. That is why basic materials to rebuild damaged houses are sparse. Reporter David Poort visited a local NGO that is testing a newly developed method of using clay and rubble on a new centre for handicapped children in Gaza City.
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Green houses, green cities
Maybe the ultimate is to build not just a green building but an entire green city. Ashok Balotra is an architect in the Netherlands. He created what he says is the world’s largest carbon-neutral community. RNW’s Marijke Peters visited ‘The City of the Sun’.
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