TIME.com: Is It Time to Kill Off the Flush Toilet?

World Toilet Organization

Indeed, not only is sanitation a good idea, it's a good investment. Biosolids can be composted into fertilizer, sewage can be processed into methane biogas, and even simple latrines in India are producing compost and fertilizer."Globally, if universal sanitation were achieved by 2015, it would cost $95 billion, but it would save $660 billion," writes Rose George in her newly released book "The Big Necessity."

Real-world examples follow: "When Peru had a cholera outbreak in 1991, it cost $1 billion to contain but could have been prevented with $100 million of better sanitation measures." Or even more alarming: "Pakistan, for example, spends 47 times more on its military budget than on water and sanitation, though it loses 120,000 people to diarrhea a year."

So while 2.6 billion people have no toilet, how many millions of us simply "flush and forget"? Eco-sanitation, or the problem of dealing efficiently and ecologically with sewer systems, wastewater, treatment and purification, is no less a serious one. In the UK alone, the sewage system emits some 28.8 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

As sewers become overloaded with urban development, drought strikes various regions of the earth, and potable water becomes increasingly scarce, even the flush toilet is now put into question.

Today, those who care are looking at innovative toilet and waste-disposal solutions from India, China and other parts of the developing world, where attitudes and habits are still evolving and open to change