From lip-locks to… poo. Benetton, the apparel brand which has recently launched its new campaign featuring kissing political leaders, now is exploring another facet of life, which is much less enjoyable. November is the month when World Toilet Day is celebrated (it’s marked on November 19), and the brand has dedicated the new edition of its COLORS magazine to this theme, which is usually not openly discussed. The Shit. A survival guide puts the everyday sanitation issues into the spotlight and invites readers to start exploring the ‘excrement’ problem. The more we are ignoring it, the more pressing it gets, so Benetton invites all of us to get informed about the fecal matter and start the conversation on a global scale.

Photo: A cover of COLORS 82 Shit. A survival guide

Feces can both kill and help; it can become the source of biological pollution and be used for producing biogas to heat homes and power autos, or fertilizers for growing and cooking food. It may sound shocking to most people in the developed countries, but today, around two-thirds of the world’s population don’t even have a toilet or latrine. The goal is to collect and recycle excrements in the proper way and turn them into something really useful. “In New York, the fecal transplants carried out in Dr Brandt’s clinic may seem like torture, but they have a 91% success rate in treating Clostridium difficile, an infection that kills 100,000 people a year in the US and Europe alone,” says Benetton’s press release. So, the poop—in case it’s treated—is really gaining momentum.

The 82th issue of COLORS, which is available in four languages English + Italian, French, Spanish or Korean from here for €11.00, explores different approaches to anal hygiene (“to wipe or to wash?”), sanitation, educating people in developing areas about the ways to eliminate the ‘poo’-related problems and many more (some of the points are highlighted in the press note). The new issue was inspired by The Big Necessity book, which was written by the British writer and journalist, Rose George and has become a best-seller and was translated into 8 languages including Arabic, Swedish and Spanish. In the book, the author, a former COLORS senior editor, describes her ‘dirty journey’ along London and New York sewer systems and a trip to Indian suburbs, where hundreds of millions of people do not have an access to toilets and have to live in awful sanitary conditions.