World Toilet Day 2021: Why you should thank your loo!

It's World Toilet Day today - so make sure you say thank-loo!

If you've not heard of it before, World Toilet Day is an official worldwide day that the United Nations (UN) created in 2013 with the aim of raising awareness of the global sanitation crisis.

This is because around half of the people in the world don't have safe access to toilets.

Toilets are more important than you might realise - not being able to get to a clean toilet leaves a lot of children around the world at risk of serious illness.

It forces them to either use dirty, unsafe pits, go in the open, or simply stay at home and miss out on their education.

The UN - a worldwide organisation, that brings countries together to talk about (and try to agree on) world issues - uses World Toilet Day to highlight the importance of safe, clean loos.

While you're at it, try our interactive guide to what happens to your poo when you flush it!

Why does World Toilet Day matter?

If you cannot see the interactive activity on this page, click here.

Around the world, 3.6 billion people live without safe access to a toilet, including hundreds of millions of children.

One in five primary schools in the world don't have toilets at all.

If you've grown up in the UK, that's probably quite hard to imagine.

As well as this, almost half of schools around the world don't have working hand-washing facilities, which affects nearly 900 million children.

"Poor sanitation contaminates drinking-water sources, rivers, beaches and food crops, spreading deadly diseases among the wider population." Says the UN.

What is the theme for this year's World Toilet Day?

This year's theme is about valuing toilets.

The campaign says that toilets - and the sanitation systems that support them - are often underfunded, badly managed or neglected in many parts of the world.

This can have a knock-on effect on people's health, wellbeing and their environment, especially in poorer communities.

The UN has set a goal of making sure everyone in the world has a safe toilet by 2030.