Singaporean businessman Jack Sim is the world’s strongest (and funniest) advocate for clean toilets as the founder of the World Toilet Association (WTO), which tackles the prickly issue of sanitation on a global level.
A little more than 10 years ago, Jack Sim was just a regular Singaporean businessman with a taste for entrepreneurial risk-taking. He dabbled in a number of industries, and had growing businesses in construction materials, real estate development, and international school education. When economic recession came with the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, his businesses contracted and he quickly became bored.
Inspiration came to him one morning while reading the newspapers. “Singapore’s then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong was saying that we should measure our social graciousness against the cleanliness of our public toilets. I saw an un-served need and started to form the Restroom Association of Singapore,” said Jack. “When I later discovered that there were 15 toilet associations in the world without a global headquarters, I offered to start the World Toilet Organization as a service platform. That was how the WTO came to being in 2001, at the inaugural World Toilet Summit held in Singapore on 19 November (now also known as the ‘World Toilet Day’).”
Jack “the toilet man” Sim
As the founder of WTO, Jack’s name and face quickly became synonymous with anything and everything to do toilets and sanitation issues on the international stage. Instead of shying away from the limelight, he was happy to use the media to engage policy-makers, academics, businessmen and social activists on the issue of sanitation, thus lending legitimacy and creating leadership for the cause.
The affable Jack is also not afraid of jokes and jibes about his role as the “toilet man”. In fact, he enjoys the lighter side of tackling this culturally sensitive issue — injecting a quirky sense of humour as an enthusiastic spokesperson for the cause. This approach has helped him to rouse global interests and win many friends and supporters around the world. WTO is now a powerful global network of 133 member organizations from 50 different countries. For his leadership on the cause for better sanitation, Jack has been recognised a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur and an Ashoka Global Fellow.
Creating a sanitation marketplace
There are 2.5 billion people in the world without proper sanitation. Rather than looking at them as needy individuals, Jack views less-privileged as potential customers for clean, safe and affordable toilets. His aim is to build an efficient sanitation marketplace at the bottom of the pyramid.
He explains: “When supply and demand drives each other through the price mechanism, innovation and competition will create self-perpetuating forces until everyone has a toilet and upgrades it at every stage as they become more affluent.”
He envisions that WTO will bring together best practices and solutions, and scale them up through innovation financing and development. He is looking to train the poor to become “sani-mart” distributors, and to recycle the human excreta into fertilizer or bio-gas, so as to prevent the spread of diseases and pollution of water sources.
The first steps of his plans are already in place with the establishment of the World Toilet College and the creation of the World Sanitation Fund Forum (WSFF). In addition, this year's World Toilet Summit & Expo will be staged in Macau from 4-6 November 2008, in support of the United Nations International Year of Sanitation. It will gather government representatives, UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, academics, corporations and the media, to debate strategies to create a sustainable sanitation marketplace for the poor and to identify opportunities for win-win situations.
- The Developed World
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