Just last week I was lamenting the fact that Michael Jackson's freakish bathroom escapades were monopolizing the media's limited poop news attention span. Fortunately last Saturday was World Toilet Day -- and today it's as if the media's toilet palate was cleansed, refreshed, and given a new and surprisingly mature outlook. This morning my cursory Googling uncovered a rash of stories about serious toilet issues. It's a very promising way to start a week.

It begins first with one for the ladies. The WTO -- that is, the World Toilet Organization -- used the occasion of World Toilet Day to suggest guidelines requiring equalization of the number of women's toilets with the number of men's in public places like nightclubs and bars. While many bathrooms are equal in square footage, you can pack a whole lot more urinals in an area than you can the sitters that women favor. By equalizing the number of toilets, they're essentially requiring women's restrooms to be bigger. I'm not sure if the guidelines from this WTO are as binding as a UN Security Council resolution, but this is a good start.

But not all poop news is good news. World Toilet Day has provided the impetus for a number of important toilet crises to come to light. Among them: Russia has more than ten millions citizens who do not have access to hygienic toilets. In fact, more than a third of the world's population lacks access to adequate sanitation. That's 2.6 billion people who are pooping in outhouses and cesspools, and who's poop is likely contaminating groundwater supplies. Two million people a year die from diarrhea; inadequate poop disposal infecting water supplies is one of the chief reasons why.

And if that weren't enough negative news, the World Wildlife Fund is reporting that European toilet paper users flush down 270,000 trees a day. With Europe averaging 22 billion rolls of toilet paper a year, the WWF is decrying paper mills like Kimberly-Clark and Georgia Pacific for not using more recycled paper in their production.

The world has a lot of poop problems. On this Monday after World Toilet Day, though, it's nice to know that the media is capable of addressing them in a serious way. We'll see how long this lasts. All it takes is one Paris Hilton drowning her dog in a toilet and this post-WTD euphoria is over.