"Professor Chris Buckley, Head of the Pollution Research Group, Chemical Engineering, UKZN recently gave a highly entertaining, yet thought provoking, public presentation on the latter while strutting back and forth across a lecture venue wearing a backpack. This backpack, he informed us – the weight and size of hand luggage when you fly – could be equated with the weight and volume of the average individual’s annual bowel output, once dried and compacted. “What…?!”, you might think. “Seriously? Someone has actually done this calculation?!” Well, yes, and while this is not a subject that most of us have thought about, academia and leading-edge think tanks on water and sanitation, such as that led by Buckley, are giving serious thought to this. Why? Why would they be spending time and money on this?"