Huussi – Imagining the future history of sanitation engages with the “Laboratory of the Future” theme set by curator Lesley Lokko by looking critically at unsustainable practices of water and fertilizer use. The exhibition, the accompanying publication Death to the flushing toilet, and planned workshops will seek to offer hope for the future. Alternative urban scale infrastructure solutions are already out there and ready to be developed further. Echoing the call to action issued by Lokko, the pavilion will invite the public and professionals to start envisioning new solutions to a global problem: the time for paradigm shift is now, we just need to start demanding it.

The exhibition uses the huussi as a domestic-scale starting point for conversations about the subject of how we treat our waste in the context of the climate crisis. In developed economies, 30% of domestic water use is used for flushing toilets. Wastewater processing accounts for 3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 1.3% of CO2 emissions – comparable to the aviation industry. Globally 80% of wastewater is released into the environment without treatment, resulting in a public health hazard and ecosystem destruction.

The exhibition also highlights the carbon intense production of nitrogen fertilizers and the undemocratic and extractivist production of phosphorus fertilizers, both of which could be reduced if our waste was recycled efficiently. Nitrogen and phosphorus washed into watercourses through agriculture and wastewater processing have become pollutants that threaten the future of the planet. Both are identified as “high risk” by the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s nine planetary boundaries study.