“Smart toilet market projected to reach $4.3bn by 2031.”
That’s the headline that confronted me when I opened the “your stories” tab in the Discovery section on Perplexity AI. I had intended to write about another story whose headline had caught my eye, “Refugee camps set to be uninhabitable by 2050 as extreme weather worsens”.
But given that my impulse to write is driven by a desire to make sense of our chaotic world, the smart toilet story seemed, somehow, to reveal more about the insane inequality we find ourselves mired in. I wonder how much the smart toilet market will be worth by 2050?
The refugee camp story wasn’t much fun to read, to be honest. It was about a UN Refugee Agency report and said things like: “Whether it is floods sweeping South Sudan and Brazil, record-breaking heat in Kenya and Pakistan, or water shortages in Chad and Ethiopia, extreme weather is pushing already fragile communities to the brink.”
Apparently, in the past 10 years weather-related disasters have been the reason for 250-million “internal displacements”. That, according to the UN, is the equivalent of about 70,000 every day, or two people being forced out of their homes every three seconds.
The UN also points out that three in four of all those who’ve been uprooted now live in countries where front-line communities face “high to extreme” exposure to climate-related hazards.
According to the outgoing UN high commissioner for refugees, “extreme weather is putting people’s safety at greater risk; it is disrupting access to essential services, destroying homes and livelihoods and forcing families — many who have already fled violence — to flee once more. These are people who have already endured immense loss, and now they face the same hardships and devastation again. They are among the hardest hit by severe droughts, deadly floods and record-breaking heatwaves, yet they have the fewest resources to recover.”
Oh well, depressing stuff. Toilets are more fun — a phrase I never dreamt I’d ever write. In its review of the “top seven smart toilets of 2025″, Good Housekeeping magazine reveals that “there are even smart toilets with built-in smart speakers, so you can play music or check the weather while you’re tending to your morning routine”. It recommends, for example, the Kohler Innate smart toilet. You’ll be delighted to learn that “the one-piece Innate can even flush on its own and lift and lower its seat automatically for start-to-finish hands-free control. The heated seat and warm water are welcome luxuries.” And all this for only R65,000, give or take!
The Eplo smart toilet sounds even better. Good Housekeeping’s experts “were impressed by its expansive feature set, which includes instant warm water on the cleansing wand and a built-in deodoriser to neutralise odours before they escape into the room”. I don’t know what a cleansing wand is, but it sounds magical.
The bidet for back and front really delivers a sense of clean that you might find surprising at first, but then really love
— Good Housekeeping
Less magical is the fact that, according to the UN, since the start of the war in Sudan, 4-million people have fled to neighbouring countries, including 1.2-million to Chad. The UN describes living conditions as disastrous in the transit camps, where refugees wait for weeks or even months before being relocated to more permanent camps.
“With the massive influx of refugees, these sites are overcrowded and vital resources such as water and food are running out. Refugees are surviving on less than 5 litres of water per person per day. This is a far cry from the 15 litres recommended by the World Health Organisation.
“At Iridimi [refugee camp], there are only around 100 latrines for tens of thousands of people. Without access to water and adequate infrastructure, hygiene practices are completely absent. There is a real urgency to improve access to water in the camps.”
These people could use a smart toilet or two. The tester notes for the Toto S7A Washlet reveal that it’s all about saving us from environmental catastrophe. “Besides the superior cleansing experience, the Washlet has reduced our toilet paper needs, which is better for the planet and has translated into real money savings over time.”
ReliefWeb describes how women and children are forced to collect water from unsafe sources such as sewers and streams because the distributed water is insufficient for all their needs, which is causing a spike in waterborne illnesses such as acute watery diarrhoea and skin diseases, especially in children.
Moving to another part of the world, Doctors Without Borders accuses Israel of “deliberately depriving people of water in Gaza, Palestine, as part of its genocidal campaign — denying Palestinians life’s necessities, including food, water and health care”.
Al Jazeera reports that in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City, “what was once a lively community has become a wasteland. Homes lie in ruins, and an essential water source, once a rainwater pond, now festers with sewage and debris.” It quotes Umm Hisham, pregnant and displaced, as saying: “We took refuge here, around the Sheikh Radwan pond, with all the sufferings you could imagine, from mosquitoes to sewage with rising levels, let alone the destruction all around. All this poses a danger to our lives and the lives of our children.”
Smart toilets aren’t just about pampering your bum. It’s all part of the apparently pressing need to let expensive technology monitor your vital signs 24/7, and then share the data with tech companies that can use it to pump advertising right into your veins.
A report by the business department of Florida International University (I checked, it’s a real university) describes the benefits. “Smart toilet seats are fitted with scanners that can track changes in bowel and bladder patterns, data is analysed using AI and if abnormalities are detected, the system sends an alert to health-care providers’ systems, connected via internet-of-things technology. Smart toilet seats generate valuable insight from the body’s waste.”
If you’re lucky enough to have the Woodbridge B-0960S smart toilet in your house (Good Housekeeping again), “you can choose from multiple wash options (posterior wash, feminine wash, et cetera), and the included touchscreen remote can be either hand-held or wall-mounted for ease of use”.
I shudder to think what wash option is disguised in that “et cetera”. And of the American Standard Advanced Clean 100 SpaLet bidet toilet, the reviewers say: “We particularly appreciate that the toilet seat automatically opens and closes (no more leaving the toilet seat up!) and that there’s a soft light to guide you in the middle of the night.” That’s a blow to the patriarchy right there.
As you will have noted by now, the smart toilet can function rather well as a metaphor for how stark inequality is in our world, especially when it comes to people who are casualties of environmental catastrophe and/or political evil. This is not to say that, if we stopped buying smart toilets and other gimcracks, anything would necessarily change. I just think it behoves us to keep the fraught complexities of the world in mind as we go about our daily lives.
I mean, who wouldn’t want Duravit’s Sensowash Starck F model toilet, designed by “renowned industrial and interior designer Philippe Starck, [that’s] sleek and modern and can be hung on the wall to save space”? As a Good Housekeeping reviewer trills: “I love the style and design of the toilet, which is spectacular to look at. The bidet for back and front really delivers a sense of clean that you might find surprising at first, but then really love.”
Well, quite. I’m sure one would find that delivery mechanism surprising. What you don’t want to find surprising, though, is the dawning realisation that the climate crisis is about to rock up at your back door, like a cleansing wand without an off switch.
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