On Tuesday, March 23, American Standard Brands will stand up 12 high-efficiency toilets outside the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the world’s longest toilet queue. The company is taking a stand for global safe drinking water and basic sanitation for all, as it celebrates World Water Day (March 22).

The World’s Longest Toilet Queue is one of many happenings taking place in Washington, D.C., next Monday and Tuesday, bringing together thousands of campaigners from around the world to identify ways to achieve the United Nations’ 2015 Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people who lack safe drinking water and basic sanitation by the year 2015. In support of World Water Day, toilet queues will be set up in Europe, Asia and North America to draw attention to WASH, an acronym for water, sanitation and hygiene.

“Lack of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene is a serious global issue,” says Jim McHale, American Standard Brands vice president, operations and engineering. “Nearly 1 billion people around the world still lack access to clean drinking water, and more than 2.5 billion people lack even basic sanitation."

A series of high-level roundtables entitled “Paths Forward for the Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Sector,” hosted by the Global Water Futures Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, will be held on March 22. The goal is to generate strategies on how to improve the outcome of WASH programs and increase participation of U.S.-based public and private sectors in global WASH initiatives. McHale and other American Standard Brands executives will also attend an invitation-only event at the National Geographic Society, expected to feature U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, where the spotlight will be on the expanding commitments of the U.S. government, corporations and non-profit organizations towards worldwide WASH proposals.


Source: American Standard