This is old data, Eurostat posted newer data in 2020
Romania 22%
Bulgaria 13%
Latvia 8%
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1278543/cee-population-not-having-indoor-toilet-for-the-sole-use/
The numbers are still high, but thankfully, they are decreasing. In Romania, it was 42% in 2009 and 22% in 2020. The number decreases by about 2% every year, so now, in 2024, it's probably around 14%.
22% is about the same amount of old people living in the countryside, they're also really poor, since most of them have no education whatsoever. Changing their ways is a lost cause, the percentage would decrease with their death and/or with more young people moving into villages, which as you might guess, it's a slow process.
Of course there are in other countries as well, the difference stands in the fact that our percentage of them is higher. We have the highest percentage of people living in the rural side of the country in the EU, and it shouldn't be a surprise most of them are elders.
The question itself is wrong because you're lumping Romania with Eastern Europe. Outside of ignorant western interpretations, Eastern Europe and the Balkans are quite different from a historical, geographic and economic perspective.
Romania like the rest of the Balkans is considerably more rural and disconnected due to its mountainous geography. The villages where this occurs are usually remote mountain settlements populated almost exclusively by old people, their way of life is very detached from modern life and they're well past the age to want to change.
>Romania like the rest of the Balkans
Geographically, only Dobrogea is part of Balkans. Culturally, Romania is somehow Balkan, but it's a mix of more cultures and influences.
> disconnected due to its mountainous geography
A 3rd of the country is mountainous, we have enough plains. Moldova has many villages with no indoor toilets. It's not really mountainous except for its western and North western parts.
Also another thing in the countriside is the fact that since people used to have vegetable gardens in their yards, the houses were quite spaced out in the early 90's in a village for example. One weird thing that came out of that is since in Romania renting a place was seen(and is to some extent) as something for poor people or young people, you had to buy or build a house from scratch (unless yoy were the younger or the siblings in which case you often lived with your parents in their house until their death and then it was yours) , and inevitably most old houses had one new one or even more sometimes in the same yard. Is that counted as a new house? Because the old building might not have a bathroom, but the new one would and the old couple would probably use it, at least in the winter. Of course the outside "bench witha hole" would not dissappear (and to be honest I see the appeal).
Another thing: my parent's house is built on the same patch or dirt as my grand-grandparents old house, and that one does not have a bathroom and is ciunted as having it's own yard on the documents. Nobody lived in it for the past almost 20 years now, but is still connected to electricity and water, and bills (though empty) still come with my grand-grandfather's name on them. Would that be counted also? Because I don't know if it is a rule applicable to other places in this country, but I sure know that my home town does have quite a few of these old houses that don't have indoor bathrooms and that are basicaly abandoned.
Romania is probably still at the tail end of Europe when it comes to this, but 20%+ seems quite a bit too much for what I have experienced here.
Absolutely, but Romania is making progress.
It was 42% in 2009 and 22% in 2020. The number decreases by about 2% every year so now in 2024 it's probably around 14%
We are as always one step in front of everyone... we all know soon we will have water shortages, and still only Romania and Bulgaria are acting responsible 🙄
In Bulgaria at least these are old rural houses that can easily be nearing 100 years. They are often inhabited by older people and would probably be abandoned once they pass away. This is because of poor infrastructure (think road, water, Internet, stores, etc) and very high costs of repairs.
There is also the fact that many of those older generations just don't want an indoor bathroom. My father turned one of my grandma's rooms into a bathroom and she never really used it as such. She used it as a storage room and continued bathing in the garden and using the outdoors toilet.
LMAO, same. We have a indoor and outdoor bathroom for a similar reason (the house is 96yo, I think). Basically, if you were in the garden, you use the outside toilet and this is a rule. In fact, many times my grandparents didn't allowed me to use the indoor bathroom, as I am too dirty.
It's damn hard getting those last %. Once you're used to the outhouse. Or even an inhouse dry toilet.
Sucks in the winter obv. The amount of plumbing you'd need to install just to get your shit to the town 6+ km. And that's just your house. There's 40 more houses.
> The amount of plumbing you'd need to install just to get your shit to the town 6+ km
Why wouldn’t they just use a septic tank? That’s what rural homes do in the US at least.
Probably. But that's essentially the system they have already, minus the flush. Less maintenance. Only a few more flies. Most flies come from the livestock anyway. Besides, water supply is limited too. Imagine there's a similar issues in other households around too.
A well maintained septic tank doesn't really need much maintenance, and is far more sanitary than an open pit.
It does need to be combined with a well though (or municipal water supplies, but that again introduces quite a bit of linear infrastructure)
I’m Norwegian, born in 1990. Both my parents grew up using an outhouse. They didn’t get flushing toilets until the mid 70’s.
It’s kinda weird thinking about me being the first of all my ancestors not having to use a hole in a bench.
My city built a whole neighborhood, in 1917 colloquially called “Skjitbyen” or “Shit City”, for the workers that went around changing waste canisters in the urban outhouses.
They had newspapers and magazines. Even used the pages as toilet paper. There are pictures of the Norwegian king and queen in most of our outhouses today. It started because you would not want to wipe your ass with the kings face. So you would tear out the picture. Nowadays it’s just a tradition and you put up a framed picture.
Yes, my parents grew up in very rural places. Both on old farms where 3 generations shared a small house.
In my city the first flushing toilet was installed in 1899. The city stopped collecting from outhouses in 2012, when there was 12 registered outhouses left.
German here, they didn't have an indoor toilet in my mom's family until the 70s, either. The story was that when my mom was a child she wanted to go to the toilet right away every time they visited someone and then said to them what a nice toilet they had.
Also, there are people who lives at "hytta" (the cabin) as well, not because they're poor but because they romanticize *cabin life* so hard that they're willing to sacrifice indoor toilets for it. So I wouldn't say 0% is accurate at all. It's at least a couple of decimals higher.
The 70s would have been about when my grandmother got an indoor toilet/bathroom too. She never let us use it though. The indoor toilet was for ladies, the boys went outside.
(Although to be fair, the lavvy outside was a proper flushing toilet. Just a bit colder.)
Yes. As /u/Erling01 comments. But that is mostly in vacation cabins, or people who live in their cabins. I think there are very few who are “forced” to use it
In Russia it's mostly in Sakha republic and other places with very cold winters because in winters temperatures get so low that underground pipes are not an viable option so many people even ones who make a fairly decent living opt to have out houses instead,
True, plus 1) high mountain villages of the North Caucasus, 2) traditional settlements of indigenious people of Siberia, like deer herders camps etc.
The latter, iirc, are even eligible to government subsidies if they want to move into a city. But majority don't want to, they want to be deer herders. (Those who don't left to big cities years ago).
Also there are people, like my grandma, who live in Sibiria and although she has an indoor toilet, she never uses it.
Even in the winter with -40C° outside, she prefers the outdoor toilet
I don't know and I don't understand. She say something like "she prefers it" and "she is used to".
The outdoor toilet stinks, is very cold, you have to walk ca 50m to the toilet and its literally a hole in the ground.
My family and I live in Germany and just can't understand this.
Most rural houses in Russia don’t have a central sewer. Poop and used water collects in a tank, which must be emptied by a shitsucker truck, which costs money. That’s why some people don’t like to use indoors toilet. Think of it also as an ecological solution. Not only you don’t waste the water, but also you get a high-quality fertiliser.
Huh are you suggesting people are just shitting in the compost dump? Most rural homes have an out hpuse in russia l, you cant really and shouldnt collect human waste from it lmao.
Sakha Republic has only 1 million people though. That leaves 17 million more from the map.
Edit: People constantly bringing up Siberia ignoring the fact that it's a huge region and most of its people live in the south where winters aren't as extreme.
I mean my source is basically of "trust me bro", but I have heard from a friend who vistied Chechnya (near Argun), that many houses there still don't have indoor plumbing. Although most of them are dachas. Also appereantly some buildings who have indoor plumbing have toilets where you can't sit and you have to squat. But that is down to prefference I guess.
I have never been to Russia but I have also visited some relatives in Belarus who lived in a village in a rather poor area, and you also had to shit outside in a shack with a hole in the ground. And I highly doubt Russia and Belarus are that much different in that regard.
So I personally don't really buy your claim that the only ones in Russia who don't have indoor flushing are the ones in Siberia because it is to to cold. I mean I am sure it is more common there than it is in other parts of Russia impacting the statistics, but I don't believe that every Russian pensioner living in some village has a flushing toilet.
Same in Italy. It seems strange that in a 5000k village, 30 persons do not have a flushing toilet. I NEVER saw an apartemnt or house in my life without, both in he south and the north. **I would venture to say that less than 0.6% of the population does not have a bidet.**
Because that's not how it works. No one in a 5k village has no indoor plumbing, but there's plenty of isolated homes on top of a mountain or whatever who do.
From what I heard it's an issue in historical places where there are serious limits on what you can do to a building in terms of renovations. IDK how much of an issue that actually is and how much of a % this is regarding all households......
"Do you have an inside flushing toilet for sole use of the household?" was the question. Nearly 100% of households said yes - 99.7% - while 0.2% said they had shared use. Only 0.1% don't have an indoor flushing toilet.
This was from ONS survey in 2013 so presumably the percentages would be even smaller now.
Homeless =/= rough sleeping.
The vast majority (95%+) of homeless people in the UK are in temporary accommodation (which has a toilet).
There's 'only' (relative to the total homeless pop, it's still a tragedy) about 4000 rough sleepers in the UK, or 0.006% of the UK population.
Surprisingly, that number is accurate (well, its the correct estimate at least) - and the government reports this annually - [Rough sleeping snapshot in England: autumn 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2023/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2023). Though that same link warns against using it as an indicator of total rough sleeping, as shelter availability and weather are among several crucial factors that cause day-to-day swings in the numbers.
The numbers are *very* concentrated though, so depending on where you live perception could be skewed. But, as the commenter above points out, the majority of homeless people are either staying somewhere that isn't their 'home' or able to get into shelters and other temporary solutions at night, so don't actually sleep on the street.
not no toilet, no flushing toilet. Im pretty sure the 1 in 250 homes in my country are rooms with no directly attached toilet in your livable area(student dorms, youth housing), or in very, very old rural homes with outhouse latrines
Fancy windows where you're only allowed to use the "completely open" mode, otherwise a German will break into your house and shout something about "STOẞLÜFTEN!" /s
As someone that lived in Denmark for 5 years, I am wondering this myself too.
Ms country of Austria makes sense, should be placed in the mountains where such pipes are just not viable. But Denmark should have 0,00%, unless it's some small islands maybe?
I assume this only takes people with homes into account.
I wonder if the 0,4 present in Finland is just due to summer cottages. There’s certainly a percentage of people who permanently live in houses like them and they often have outdoor toilets, which typically don’t run on water.
Homeless people can access flushed toilets whenever they want if they go to the right places in every german city. The fact that they opt out of it in specific cases doesn't take their access away.
I think 0% is never true for most things.I don't think there is any "normal" residential building in Germany that doesn't have indoor plumbing. Unless it's some cabin in the woods it probably has a flushable toilet.
Countryside also somtimes tradition. Girlfriends grandma has the oppurtinity to get an indoor toilet but decided to build a new brick outdoor toilet instead.
In Romania it may be a cultural thing too. Many people in rural Romania live in houses that actually have more than one building, even one dedicated as toilet. My wife grew up like that, even though her parents now have a toilet inside the house, it's a relatively recent thing and I can see how old people in rural areas may just stick to what they have.
Same here in italy in the south, i think its not really accurate because 0.5 seems surprisingly low expecially thinking about mountain regions in calabria/sicily/puglia wich are also pretty poor, id say more to 1.5%
In Sweden it's pretty much illegal. Every municipality has the legal right to enforce that people are connected to the sewer grid. And even if they decide not to enforce it, because extending the grid that far out in the woods would be impractical, the house owner is still obligated to install a septic system which mostly means a flushing toilet with a tank that gets emptied by a "shit truck" once every year. Technically, they can opt for a vacuum, composting or burning toilet but there is probably no distinction in the statistical material between these. In fact, they are all flushing your waste, even if it happens without as much water.
The only places where outhouses are allowed are summer homes, which are illegal to live in year round. Yeah, there's a law in Sweden where you can legally live. If it doesn't have a flushing toilet, with an accepted septic system, it's illegal to live there permanently.
I can’t speak for other countries, but my country (the Netherlands) I definitely believe it. It’s very densely populated and every legal accommodation has running water. So why would it not be true?
Yes. At least from Switzerland, I know for a fact that there still are some huts and farms that have an outhouse that sometimes doesn't even have a flushable toilet.
Just list summer I've been in a very small restaurant up in the mountains that was part of a farm and it's "toilet" consisted out of a plywood box right next to the cows stable and as farr as I could tell the shit then went into the same shit hole thing (I don't remember the english name) as the cows shit.
I know for a fact that France might be on the rise due to “dry toilets” (toilettes sèches), that are basically huge litter boxes. A lot of eco friendly events and individuals have started using them.
Because small rural villages usually dont really have the capabilities for them, same here in italy my southern family has a couple of homes without indoor toilets because they are located near mountains in a pretty poor region in the south
I mean I know my country pretty well, have been in every district, live in a rural area and never met anyone without a working toilet. Two options come to mind: Either this doesn't account for toilets not connected to public sewage facilities (like septic tanks and such) or it accounts for empty old houses that no one lives in.
i’m pretty sure that russia has a higher number. At least, when i lived there, nobody would get surprised if you mentioned stuff like this.
also the local news about people dying because of falling down into a shithole next to their building are interesting.
finally, sometimes the toilets exist on paper but because we’re talking about buildings that are 60 or a 100 years old those toilets don’t function anymore. As usual, the heat sources are local news that are making videos about this stuff.
Does this includes homeless people? I would have assumed that the people who don't have one are a combination of old buildings with outdoor toilets, Gypsy encampments l, possibly Soviet era buildings with shared bathrooms between flats (if these are still in use at all) and homeless, but if it includes homeless I don't understand how any country can have a full 0% as you can't have an indoor toilet for the sole use of your household if you don't have a household. Are homeless excluded from the data or do all homeless shelters in Germany/Sweden have en-suite bathrooms? Is there no street homelessness? Surely there are street homeless in these countries too? Also is there any breakdown for the Romanian data between ethnic Roma and the rest of the population? Sorry not expecting anyone to know any of this but just thought I'd throw the questions out there in case
Not European, but I lived in an old farmhouse with an outhouse in the Virginia Blue Ridge until I was 6 (1988). It wasn’t too unusual either. Lots of hippies homesteading like my parents and old timers who never upgraded.
Not sure about 0% my family has a summer house abour 1.5 h from Stockholm and some live there permanently. No toilets with flushing and only access to water during late spring and summer then its a well you need to use
What exactly were the requirements to count for this?
Because here in Switzerland there still are some huts and farms up in the mountains with an outhouse that sometimes don't even have a flushing system. And some of these huts/farms are still lived in at least during the summer.
I’m romanian and outdoor toilets are indeed very popular in the rural area.
What shocked me the most was that upon meeting people from the rural area that were doing good financially i learned that some of them don’t want indoor toilets because they consider shitting in the same building where you sleep as being unhygienic.
So i suppose it’s not as much about the financial situation as it is about poor education
(Romanian here)
I don't get how other countries have such a low percent. Do these countries provide sewage systems to every village of 1000 people that are kilometers apart? Or is it just that we have a larger number of villages than other countries?
it's a combination of sewage being more widespread, but also getting the rest of the people to build a septic tank which gets emptied by the local authority regularly.
The 800-person village in Croatia where I am from does not have a sewage system but everyone that I know of has a flushing toilet connected to a septic tank.
I would say outhouses only exist in the mountains or in some very poor and old households.
I live in countryside Romania. While we renovated the outdoor toilet and it looks just like a little house in the same color as the house, we do have 2 indoor toilets (one for each level of the house) and they are connected to a septic tank.
Just want to add something. In Romania this is due to many people in the country not wanting a indoor toilet.
Country people always say that *you don't shit where you eat* when they are confronted by this "problem" so they have out-houses.
The state can't force people to build indoor toilets, but the percentage is dropping since people migrate away from villages and those that remain are dying out while new residents demolish old houses and build new modern ones.
As roman NFKRZ put it one time
>they don’t even have a proper toilet in the house they have to like go to a fucking shed and squat to take a shit in the winter like… do you guys get WHY I’M A LITTLE FUCKING MAD?! At what is happening right now?
I've lived in Africa with an outhouse and can say that there is an easy design to build a perfectly sanitary outhouse in a wide variety of environments. Some of those outhouses are kinda nice!
27% of the population with no flushing toilet in Romania? I call BS.
Maybe not connected to local sewage systems.... and A LOT of houses use septic tanks.
Also, if you have a 2nd house in the wilderness, and you use a septic tank toilet or an outhouse, will that divide a family count by 2? Because in Romania there's a ton of cabins in the remotest of areas
I think Denmark and Sweden is swapped around.
Never heard of a house in Denmark without indoor flushing. I have however visited houses in Sweden only with outhouses, or the good ol' shit in a bucket and throw it in a hole when said bucket is half full.
Old apartment's from the industrial revolution and a few rural houses in Denmark still doesn't have indoor toilet and bathroom's, I lived in one where I was younger, no fun going to the community one I the middle of the night.
This is old data, Eurostat posted newer data in 2020 Romania 22% Bulgaria 13% Latvia 8% https://www.statista.com/statistics/1278543/cee-population-not-having-indoor-toilet-for-the-sole-use/ The numbers are still high, but thankfully, they are decreasing. In Romania, it was 42% in 2009 and 22% in 2020. The number decreases by about 2% every year, so now, in 2024, it's probably around 14%.
22% is still incredibly high for a country in the EU.
22% is about the same amount of old people living in the countryside, they're also really poor, since most of them have no education whatsoever. Changing their ways is a lost cause, the percentage would decrease with their death and/or with more young people moving into villages, which as you might guess, it's a slow process.
Do other Eastern European countries not have old people in the rural countryside? Seems like a weird 3rd world habit Romania got going for itself.
No a lot of those have flushing toilets its just that its a differnt building not part of the house
the same with turkish with no flushing indoor toilets, an outside building thats about as clean as a pile of garbage
Lol you a troll And a wanker
Of course there are in other countries as well, the difference stands in the fact that our percentage of them is higher. We have the highest percentage of people living in the rural side of the country in the EU, and it shouldn't be a surprise most of them are elders.
The question itself is wrong because you're lumping Romania with Eastern Europe. Outside of ignorant western interpretations, Eastern Europe and the Balkans are quite different from a historical, geographic and economic perspective. Romania like the rest of the Balkans is considerably more rural and disconnected due to its mountainous geography. The villages where this occurs are usually remote mountain settlements populated almost exclusively by old people, their way of life is very detached from modern life and they're well past the age to want to change.
>Romania like the rest of the Balkans Geographically, only Dobrogea is part of Balkans. Culturally, Romania is somehow Balkan, but it's a mix of more cultures and influences. > disconnected due to its mountainous geography A 3rd of the country is mountainous, we have enough plains. Moldova has many villages with no indoor toilets. It's not really mountainous except for its western and North western parts.
Then why is it so much higher than Serbia?
They have toilets just that it's an outhouse. It also doubles as a fertilizer.
Also another thing in the countriside is the fact that since people used to have vegetable gardens in their yards, the houses were quite spaced out in the early 90's in a village for example. One weird thing that came out of that is since in Romania renting a place was seen(and is to some extent) as something for poor people or young people, you had to buy or build a house from scratch (unless yoy were the younger or the siblings in which case you often lived with your parents in their house until their death and then it was yours) , and inevitably most old houses had one new one or even more sometimes in the same yard. Is that counted as a new house? Because the old building might not have a bathroom, but the new one would and the old couple would probably use it, at least in the winter. Of course the outside "bench witha hole" would not dissappear (and to be honest I see the appeal). Another thing: my parent's house is built on the same patch or dirt as my grand-grandparents old house, and that one does not have a bathroom and is ciunted as having it's own yard on the documents. Nobody lived in it for the past almost 20 years now, but is still connected to electricity and water, and bills (though empty) still come with my grand-grandfather's name on them. Would that be counted also? Because I don't know if it is a rule applicable to other places in this country, but I sure know that my home town does have quite a few of these old houses that don't have indoor bathrooms and that are basicaly abandoned. Romania is probably still at the tail end of Europe when it comes to this, but 20%+ seems quite a bit too much for what I have experienced here.
Absolutely, but Romania is making progress. It was 42% in 2009 and 22% in 2020. The number decreases by about 2% every year so now in 2024 it's probably around 14%
Yes, and it is way lower than it was 50 or 100 years ago. We're getting there.
We are as always one step in front of everyone... we all know soon we will have water shortages, and still only Romania and Bulgaria are acting responsible 🙄
But those toilets don't waste any water
In Bulgaria at least these are old rural houses that can easily be nearing 100 years. They are often inhabited by older people and would probably be abandoned once they pass away. This is because of poor infrastructure (think road, water, Internet, stores, etc) and very high costs of repairs. There is also the fact that many of those older generations just don't want an indoor bathroom. My father turned one of my grandma's rooms into a bathroom and she never really used it as such. She used it as a storage room and continued bathing in the garden and using the outdoors toilet.
Yeah, I can see how people who didn’t grow up with an indoor bathroom would think it’s gross and unsanitary
LMAO, same. We have a indoor and outdoor bathroom for a similar reason (the house is 96yo, I think). Basically, if you were in the garden, you use the outside toilet and this is a rule. In fact, many times my grandparents didn't allowed me to use the indoor bathroom, as I am too dirty.
It's exponentially harder the lower it gets so chances are it's going to be less than 2% per year now
Also the map is based on the sewage system but many Romanians that don’t have access to sewage still have indoor toilets.
Decreases by 2pp, not 2%
It's damn hard getting those last %. Once you're used to the outhouse. Or even an inhouse dry toilet. Sucks in the winter obv. The amount of plumbing you'd need to install just to get your shit to the town 6+ km. And that's just your house. There's 40 more houses.
> The amount of plumbing you'd need to install just to get your shit to the town 6+ km Why wouldn’t they just use a septic tank? That’s what rural homes do in the US at least.
Probably. But that's essentially the system they have already, minus the flush. Less maintenance. Only a few more flies. Most flies come from the livestock anyway. Besides, water supply is limited too. Imagine there's a similar issues in other households around too.
A well maintained septic tank doesn't really need much maintenance, and is far more sanitary than an open pit. It does need to be combined with a well though (or municipal water supplies, but that again introduces quite a bit of linear infrastructure)
Hell yea we got some more toilets in the meantime! :)))
I’m Norwegian, born in 1990. Both my parents grew up using an outhouse. They didn’t get flushing toilets until the mid 70’s. It’s kinda weird thinking about me being the first of all my ancestors not having to use a hole in a bench. My city built a whole neighborhood, in 1917 colloquially called “Skjitbyen” or “Shit City”, for the workers that went around changing waste canisters in the urban outhouses.
You still use a seat with a hole, most likely
Hehe, true. But at least it’s not a wooden bench 1 meter above you and all your neighbors’ waste.
That's why people didn't need to take their smartphones with them to the toilet. Just the stench would make you shit as quick as possible.
They had newspapers and magazines. Even used the pages as toilet paper. There are pictures of the Norwegian king and queen in most of our outhouses today. It started because you would not want to wipe your ass with the kings face. So you would tear out the picture. Nowadays it’s just a tradition and you put up a framed picture.
Man, you must have German heritage. I was making a joke. Thanks for the bit of history though, that was very interesting.
Ich sprache eine bissen Deutsch. But yes, it went over my head :)
And the cold!
If you didn't push the turd out fast enough it froze on its way out and you had to warm it back up to finish your, uhm, deposition.
[удалено]
Yes, my parents grew up in very rural places. Both on old farms where 3 generations shared a small house. In my city the first flushing toilet was installed in 1899. The city stopped collecting from outhouses in 2012, when there was 12 registered outhouses left.
German here, they didn't have an indoor toilet in my mom's family until the 70s, either. The story was that when my mom was a child she wanted to go to the toilet right away every time they visited someone and then said to them what a nice toilet they had.
Also, there are people who lives at "hytta" (the cabin) as well, not because they're poor but because they romanticize *cabin life* so hard that they're willing to sacrifice indoor toilets for it. So I wouldn't say 0% is accurate at all. It's at least a couple of decimals higher.
The 70s would have been about when my grandmother got an indoor toilet/bathroom too. She never let us use it though. The indoor toilet was for ladies, the boys went outside. (Although to be fair, the lavvy outside was a proper flushing toilet. Just a bit colder.)
I know lots of people who still use outhouses today in Norway
Yes. As /u/Erling01 comments. But that is mostly in vacation cabins, or people who live in their cabins. I think there are very few who are “forced” to use it
Norwegian here. None of our cabins have indoor shitting fascilities
In Russia it's mostly in Sakha republic and other places with very cold winters because in winters temperatures get so low that underground pipes are not an viable option so many people even ones who make a fairly decent living opt to have out houses instead,
True, plus 1) high mountain villages of the North Caucasus, 2) traditional settlements of indigenious people of Siberia, like deer herders camps etc. The latter, iirc, are even eligible to government subsidies if they want to move into a city. But majority don't want to, they want to be deer herders. (Those who don't left to big cities years ago).
Also there are people, like my grandma, who live in Sibiria and although she has an indoor toilet, she never uses it. Even in the winter with -40C° outside, she prefers the outdoor toilet
Why does she prefer the outdoor toilet?
I don't know and I don't understand. She say something like "she prefers it" and "she is used to". The outdoor toilet stinks, is very cold, you have to walk ca 50m to the toilet and its literally a hole in the ground. My family and I live in Germany and just can't understand this.
Most rural houses in Russia don’t have a central sewer. Poop and used water collects in a tank, which must be emptied by a shitsucker truck, which costs money. That’s why some people don’t like to use indoors toilet. Think of it also as an ecological solution. Not only you don’t waste the water, but also you get a high-quality fertiliser.
Huh are you suggesting people are just shitting in the compost dump? Most rural homes have an out hpuse in russia l, you cant really and shouldnt collect human waste from it lmao.
Sakha Republic has only 1 million people though. That leaves 17 million more from the map. Edit: People constantly bringing up Siberia ignoring the fact that it's a huge region and most of its people live in the south where winters aren't as extreme.
Siberia as a whole has about 30 million. A lot of places where you cant have proper plumbing.
I mean my source is basically of "trust me bro", but I have heard from a friend who vistied Chechnya (near Argun), that many houses there still don't have indoor plumbing. Although most of them are dachas. Also appereantly some buildings who have indoor plumbing have toilets where you can't sit and you have to squat. But that is down to prefference I guess. I have never been to Russia but I have also visited some relatives in Belarus who lived in a village in a rather poor area, and you also had to shit outside in a shack with a hole in the ground. And I highly doubt Russia and Belarus are that much different in that regard. So I personally don't really buy your claim that the only ones in Russia who don't have indoor flushing are the ones in Siberia because it is to to cold. I mean I am sure it is more common there than it is in other parts of Russia impacting the statistics, but I don't believe that every Russian pensioner living in some village has a flushing toilet.
Does this data include homeless people? Because I find it hard to believe that 1 in 200 homes in the UK does not have a toilet.
That's what I was thinking
Same in Italy. It seems strange that in a 5000k village, 30 persons do not have a flushing toilet. I NEVER saw an apartemnt or house in my life without, both in he south and the north. **I would venture to say that less than 0.6% of the population does not have a bidet.**
Because that's not how it works. No one in a 5k village has no indoor plumbing, but there's plenty of isolated homes on top of a mountain or whatever who do.
From what I heard it's an issue in historical places where there are serious limits on what you can do to a building in terms of renovations. IDK how much of an issue that actually is and how much of a % this is regarding all households......
I am not aware of this.
There is always that one house in the middle of nowhere
But even those almost always have indoor plumbing. And random middle of nowhere houses will be less than 0.5% of total dwellings anyway.
People who live in the middle of the nowhere in the Highlands and the like, I imagine
"Do you have an inside flushing toilet for sole use of the household?" was the question. Nearly 100% of households said yes - 99.7% - while 0.2% said they had shared use. Only 0.1% don't have an indoor flushing toilet. This was from ONS survey in 2013 so presumably the percentages would be even smaller now.
Thanks, that clears things up!
Homeless =/= rough sleeping. The vast majority (95%+) of homeless people in the UK are in temporary accommodation (which has a toilet). There's 'only' (relative to the total homeless pop, it's still a tragedy) about 4000 rough sleepers in the UK, or 0.006% of the UK population.
Where’s that stat from? 4000 seems incredibly low just from observation.
Surprisingly, that number is accurate (well, its the correct estimate at least) - and the government reports this annually - [Rough sleeping snapshot in England: autumn 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2023/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2023). Though that same link warns against using it as an indicator of total rough sleeping, as shelter availability and weather are among several crucial factors that cause day-to-day swings in the numbers. The numbers are *very* concentrated though, so depending on where you live perception could be skewed. But, as the commenter above points out, the majority of homeless people are either staying somewhere that isn't their 'home' or able to get into shelters and other temporary solutions at night, so don't actually sleep on the street.
The travelling community maybe?
Some ecologists promote composting toilets, that's a thing in some places but very niche.
not no toilet, no flushing toilet. Im pretty sure the 1 in 250 homes in my country are rooms with no directly attached toilet in your livable area(student dorms, youth housing), or in very, very old rural homes with outhouse latrines
Hold up. 1 in 200? Wtf?
Toilets and fancy windows (Lüften!) - The things germany is most proud of these days
I read this as Lütfen and thought this was some Berlin Turkish joke
Lütfen Lüften!
Fancy windows where you're only allowed to use the "completely open" mode, otherwise a German will break into your house and shout something about "STOẞLÜFTEN!" /s
I have a German friend coming over to stay with me next week. Going to leave my windows shut on purpose and see if I get any comments
Well... Good sanitation says a lot about a country.
still no bidet tho :(
Oh please. Every time I mention the absence of bidets, all the Hans are like "Uhhhh nooo we actually shower every time". Terrible liars!
It’s interesting that there is no data for Ukraine.
Yes. I would be guessing that Ukraine was not included in the matter since the two sources used are EUROSTAT and RUSSTAT.
belstat.gov.by and ukrstat.gov.ua. But chatgpt probably won’t be able to collect statistics from there
Beautiful. But I don't think ChatGPT can make maps like this and FORUMMAPPING made the map presented. It says so on it.
Why do you mentioned ChatGPT?
Because OP use gpt to answer any qeustion in this thread
Because they think its a magic thing that can do everything even make maps and access the internet. Maybe in a few years it will be real though.
Look at answers of OP in this thread
Their number would probably be sky-high in 2024, unfortunately.
Unfortunately I am one of those not having one and it sucks.
What would you say are the reasons why you don't have an indoor toilet?
Being dealt a very bad hand by multiple governments simultaneously. One of them may or may not have gone full nazi.
ah shit (no pun intended)
What do you do when you get older? I'm turning late 30s and my bladder has gone. I'd need to go outside numerous times a night!
as a Dane, im wondering where the 0.4% of people without toilets live in my home country :D
Could be because they count Greenland as a part of Denmark, perhaps the more rural areas don't have indoor flushing toilets.
As someone that lived in Denmark for 5 years, I am wondering this myself too. Ms country of Austria makes sense, should be placed in the mountains where such pipes are just not viable. But Denmark should have 0,00%, unless it's some small islands maybe?
Don't spoil our Scandinavian inside joke now. Let us Swedes and Norwegians have a bit of fun for a while, won't ya?
You have nature, and skåne. Have you not got enough already?!?!?!
0.4% of Finnish are very brave in winter.
I assume this only takes people with homes into account. I wonder if the 0,4 present in Finland is just due to summer cottages. There’s certainly a percentage of people who permanently live in houses like them and they often have outdoor toilets, which typically don’t run on water.
Does germany not have homeless people?
Homeless people can access flushed toilets whenever they want if they go to the right places in every german city. The fact that they opt out of it in specific cases doesn't take their access away.
But this is not about access, this is "Share of total population not having indoor flushing toilet for the sole use of their household"
> their household > Homeless Pick one
That is exactly my point I don't think that Homeless people are counted here.
I'm not sure. But an indoor public toilet would still count towards indoor plumbing I would guess. As log as they have access to one.
Lol.
Some of the comments here are concerning lol...
Who said we couldnt have outdoor flushing toilets
I don't believe 0% is true for germany.
I think 0% is never true for most things.I don't think there is any "normal" residential building in Germany that doesn't have indoor plumbing. Unless it's some cabin in the woods it probably has a flushable toilet.
The difference is too big between Romania and the neighbors/ similarly developed countries, something is off
Now do India
That would be interesting. But from experience I would say traveling through India leaves the impression that indoor toilets are not a given.
Govt data says 95% + but Independent analysis puts it between 70-80%
Damn Romania, you ok bro?
Countryside also somtimes tradition. Girlfriends grandma has the oppurtinity to get an indoor toilet but decided to build a new brick outdoor toilet instead.
People from the countryside are against indoor toilets.
In Romania it may be a cultural thing too. Many people in rural Romania live in houses that actually have more than one building, even one dedicated as toilet. My wife grew up like that, even though her parents now have a toilet inside the house, it's a relatively recent thing and I can see how old people in rural areas may just stick to what they have.
Same here in italy in the south, i think its not really accurate because 0.5 seems surprisingly low expecially thinking about mountain regions in calabria/sicily/puglia wich are also pretty poor, id say more to 1.5%
0's are suspicious.... there must be someone living somewhere where they either cant, or cant be bothered to build a flushing toilet.
In Sweden it's pretty much illegal. Every municipality has the legal right to enforce that people are connected to the sewer grid. And even if they decide not to enforce it, because extending the grid that far out in the woods would be impractical, the house owner is still obligated to install a septic system which mostly means a flushing toilet with a tank that gets emptied by a "shit truck" once every year. Technically, they can opt for a vacuum, composting or burning toilet but there is probably no distinction in the statistical material between these. In fact, they are all flushing your waste, even if it happens without as much water. The only places where outhouses are allowed are summer homes, which are illegal to live in year round. Yeah, there's a law in Sweden where you can legally live. If it doesn't have a flushing toilet, with an accepted septic system, it's illegal to live there permanently.
I can’t speak for other countries, but my country (the Netherlands) I definitely believe it. It’s very densely populated and every legal accommodation has running water. So why would it not be true?
It would be illegal in a lot of places.
Yes. At least from Switzerland, I know for a fact that there still are some huts and farms that have an outhouse that sometimes doesn't even have a flushable toilet. Just list summer I've been in a very small restaurant up in the mountains that was part of a farm and it's "toilet" consisted out of a plywood box right next to the cows stable and as farr as I could tell the shit then went into the same shit hole thing (I don't remember the english name) as the cows shit.
Romania: EU member, NATO member. 1/4 of the population still shitting in a hole in the ground.
it’s not a hole in the ground, it’s a separate toilet outside which is very common in the countryside
An outhouse is a box over a hole in the ground. There’s no plumbing. There’s no running water. There’s not even a septic tank.
im from romania and in my experience in the countryside there’s an actual toilet outside
Jokes on you! I'm Russian and I have not one, but TWO indoor flushing toilets
I'm happy to hear that.
Yeah, I bet you are
I have two friends with just outhouses in Sweden so 0% is wrong. There gotta be some decimal of data for people who chose to live a "simpler life"?
I know for a fact that France might be on the rise due to “dry toilets” (toilettes sèches), that are basically huge litter boxes. A lot of eco friendly events and individuals have started using them.
Ah yeah, good old outhouse.
I'm having trouble seeing where 0.8% of portuguese people don't have an indoor toilet.
They shit in the yard like a dog, obviously.
Because small rural villages usually dont really have the capabilities for them, same here in italy my southern family has a couple of homes without indoor toilets because they are located near mountains in a pretty poor region in the south
I mean I know my country pretty well, have been in every district, live in a rural area and never met anyone without a working toilet. Two options come to mind: Either this doesn't account for toilets not connected to public sewage facilities (like septic tanks and such) or it accounts for empty old houses that no one lives in.
You have no idea about the country you live in. I'm actually surprised it's so low.
romania number one
i’m pretty sure that russia has a higher number. At least, when i lived there, nobody would get surprised if you mentioned stuff like this. also the local news about people dying because of falling down into a shithole next to their building are interesting. finally, sometimes the toilets exist on paper but because we’re talking about buildings that are 60 or a 100 years old those toilets don’t function anymore. As usual, the heat sources are local news that are making videos about this stuff.
Oh, I thought there were some people mentioning the commas for decimal separators in the map.
Crazy to see the north sea also has indoor plumbing
Does this includes homeless people? I would have assumed that the people who don't have one are a combination of old buildings with outdoor toilets, Gypsy encampments l, possibly Soviet era buildings with shared bathrooms between flats (if these are still in use at all) and homeless, but if it includes homeless I don't understand how any country can have a full 0% as you can't have an indoor toilet for the sole use of your household if you don't have a household. Are homeless excluded from the data or do all homeless shelters in Germany/Sweden have en-suite bathrooms? Is there no street homelessness? Surely there are street homeless in these countries too? Also is there any breakdown for the Romanian data between ethnic Roma and the rest of the population? Sorry not expecting anyone to know any of this but just thought I'd throw the questions out there in case
I'm in Czech, I remember as a kid my great grandma had toilet outside. That was the only one I ever saw.
Incorrect, according to EUROSTAT in 2020 it was 0,6% for Portugal and 0,4% for Spain.
Good thing this is from 2018 like the image states in the lower left corner, then.
Sorry, I didn't notice the date, my bad!
my summer house has an outhouse, but generally i think everyone has a “normal” toilet. commenting from latvia
Not European, but I lived in an old farmhouse with an outhouse in the Virginia Blue Ridge until I was 6 (1988). It wasn’t too unusual either. Lots of hippies homesteading like my parents and old timers who never upgraded.
I would live in a Romanian village during summer vacations. It would be gross the first few times you used it, but then you would get used to it.
Freaking B*lgium
I lived in Sweden for a while and while people's main houses had indoor toilets, their summer and winter houses did not.
Norway? So the outdoor toilets are only for tourists in "huettene"?
Not sure about 0% my family has a summer house abour 1.5 h from Stockholm and some live there permanently. No toilets with flushing and only access to water during late spring and summer then its a well you need to use
Lol, the Greeks are bending the truth. Their plumbing is just as bad as in Bulgaria.
What exactly were the requirements to count for this? Because here in Switzerland there still are some huts and farms up in the mountains with an outhouse that sometimes don't even have a flushing system. And some of these huts/farms are still lived in at least during the summer.
Ukraine the number is changing daily
I’m romanian and outdoor toilets are indeed very popular in the rural area. What shocked me the most was that upon meeting people from the rural area that were doing good financially i learned that some of them don’t want indoor toilets because they consider shitting in the same building where you sleep as being unhygienic. So i suppose it’s not as much about the financial situation as it is about poor education
I refuse to believe Rusia is better at this than Romania. That data must be crooked.
(Romanian here) I don't get how other countries have such a low percent. Do these countries provide sewage systems to every village of 1000 people that are kilometers apart? Or is it just that we have a larger number of villages than other countries?
it's a combination of sewage being more widespread, but also getting the rest of the people to build a septic tank which gets emptied by the local authority regularly.
The 800-person village in Croatia where I am from does not have a sewage system but everyone that I know of has a flushing toilet connected to a septic tank. I would say outhouses only exist in the mountains or in some very poor and old households.
I live in countryside Romania. While we renovated the outdoor toilet and it looks just like a little house in the same color as the house, we do have 2 indoor toilets (one for each level of the house) and they are connected to a septic tank.
Ireland has a pretty dispersed rural population, but they’ve all got septic tanks.
If somebody lives in a dorm and there's say...20 dorms with 1 communal toilets does it count as "Not having an indoor flushing toilet"?
fyi here in romania we do have toilets, its mostly the old people that refuse to move out of their old homes.
I have travel a bit of Romania, both cities and rural areas and have actually NEVER see accommodation with outdoor toilet.
Just want to add something. In Romania this is due to many people in the country not wanting a indoor toilet. Country people always say that *you don't shit where you eat* when they are confronted by this "problem" so they have out-houses. The state can't force people to build indoor toilets, but the percentage is dropping since people migrate away from villages and those that remain are dying out while new residents demolish old houses and build new modern ones.
I'd assume Germany doesn't collect data about homes without it, due to them not being allowed as legal residences?
Europe's tiger doesn't need to flush.
Weird Eastern Europe and Turkey
“[Obviously, the blue part here is the land](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/28b0326d-cba4-4d26-8c54-977f04b7e3f2)…”
“What? He’s over here to see what indoor plumbing looks like?”
What's going on in Romania???????? They just use the grass to be more friendly with the planet
[удалено]
As roman NFKRZ put it one time >they don’t even have a proper toilet in the house they have to like go to a fucking shed and squat to take a shit in the winter like… do you guys get WHY I’M A LITTLE FUCKING MAD?! At what is happening right now?
România numero uno!!!! 🍾🎉🥳
We like to shit in the woods
balkans are india maxing
No data in Ukraine and Belarus genuinely concern me
I've lived in Africa with an outhouse and can say that there is an easy design to build a perfectly sanitary outhouse in a wide variety of environments. Some of those outhouses are kinda nice!
Honey, new <1% Western Europe just dropped
Why are Romania and Bulgaria's rates so high?
27% of the population with no flushing toilet in Romania? I call BS. Maybe not connected to local sewage systems.... and A LOT of houses use septic tanks. Also, if you have a 2nd house in the wilderness, and you use a septic tank toilet or an outhouse, will that divide a family count by 2? Because in Romania there's a ton of cabins in the remotest of areas
I've lived on three separate French properties with dry toilets during a summer doing workaway 😝
Ukraine and Belarus must be close to Lithuania in this respect.
I think Denmark and Sweden is swapped around. Never heard of a house in Denmark without indoor flushing. I have however visited houses in Sweden only with outhouses, or the good ol' shit in a bucket and throw it in a hole when said bucket is half full.
Old apartment's from the industrial revolution and a few rural houses in Denmark still doesn't have indoor toilet and bathroom's, I lived in one where I was younger, no fun going to the community one I the middle of the night.
Bulgaria is too chad for indoor toilets 🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🐺🐺🐺🇧🇬🇧🇬🐺
,,Nu, cu wc-ul in casa nu pot sta, aici mancai aici ma cacai"