Leading The Global Clean Toilet Revolution- Jack Sim
Jack Sim is The Founder of the World Toilet Organization.
Renowned as "Mr. Toilet," Jack Sim shattered the global stigma surrounding toilets and sanitation by propelling the issue into the international spotlight. After achieving financial independence, he retired from business to dedicate his life to social work.
In 1998, he established the Restroom Association of Singapore and 2001 founded the World Toilet Organization (WTO), a global network advocating for improved sanitation and public health policies. WTO proclaimed November 19th as World Toilet Day, which has since been recognised as an official UN observance.
In this episode, we discuss why toilets matter for global sanitation and how the World Toilet Organization is making a difference. Jack speaks candidly about his journey—his challenges with the Singaporean government and how he has also helped bring clean toilets overseas.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:49 How Important Are Toilets
05:44 Why Were Toilets Discounted?
07:55 Founding the World Toilet Organization
10:56 Early Challenges in Public Toilet Cleanliness
11:22 Why Coffeeshop Toilets in Singapore Are Dirty
15:58 Bringing Clean Toilets Overseas
18:11 The Chinese Toilet Revolution
20:46 Bringing Clean Toilets to India
25:13 Getting Salman Khan to Help With Fundraising
29:12 Guerrilla Marketing and the World Toilet Organization
30:33 Global Sanitation Challenges and Progress
34:05 Privatization of Sewage Treatment in Brazil
36:05 Cultural Identity and National Dress
40:13 Navigating Bureaucracies and Public Policy
44:30 What Drives Jack?
47:40 Living a Life of Purpose Beyond Materialism
51:33 Future Aspirations for the World Toilet Organization
55:34 Life Advice
Jack 00:00
When COVID killed 30,000 people, the entire world shut down. But if diarrhea killed 2 million people every year, nothing is alarming. This $150 billion requires politicians to gain visibility mileage out of it, and only charismatic agendas like water, children, women - things that can elevate political standing - will be marketable and funded.
I have exactly 4,433 days to my 80th birthday, which I call my expiry date. If you don't spend this time properly, you just waste this opportunity to live a wholesome life.
Keith 00:49
Today I am joined by Jack Sim, more affectionately known as Mr. Toilet. He's the author of the new book "The Gumption of Mr. Toilet" where he talks about how he mobilized the world to effect change, bringing clean sanitation from Singapore to the world. It is my honor and privilege to have Jack here with me today.
You said that air conditioning was the most important invention of the 20th century that enabled Singaporean workers to work more effectively. I would argue that maybe the toilet, the clean toilet, should be up there at number 1 or 1.5. Do you agree or disagree?
Jack 01:27
The British Medical Journal actually conducted a vote among all doctors and scientific researchers on what is the biggest medical advancement in the history of mankind. It was voted that the flush toilet is the most important medical invention because it extended human life by 20 years. Vaccines couldn't do that, penicillin couldn't do that, X-rays couldn't do that - the toilet did it.
Human life was formerly shorter, and now we are living much longer. Of course, nowadays there are other health things that keep you from dying because you can replace organs and later on 3D printing, but up to that last vote, the toilet is the winner. The flush toilet is actually one of the most important inventions in helping us improve our lifespan, and maybe the air conditioning will come in terms of enhancing productivity and also hygiene and hand washing that goes together with the flush toilet.
Keith 02:35
I want to ask you to help me paint a picture. What are some of the negative downsides to an economy or to a person if they don't have access to a clean toilet? What are some of the bad things that can happen?
Jack 02:49
I have personal experience of being born in 1957 in Singapore when Singapore was a very poor country. Our house was a hut, and we didn't have a toilet at home. The toilet commonly used by everybody in the village was a bucket system.
As a child, I would go there and see all the waste of different colors from everybody, blood from sanitary pads, and while squatting there, very big green flies would disturb me. It was a very traumatic experience to go to the toilet. In the end, I didn't go to the toilet - I always used a chamber pot and asked my mother to dispose of it into the toilet after I used it so that I didn't have the trauma.
When I first started in 2001, 40% of the world didn't have a toilet. They actually went behind bushes, in the open, next to drains, by the riversides. This is a serious problem because women lost their privacy - they were peeped at, molested, raped, and sometimes killed by rapists who didn't want evidence left behind.
Girls who were menstruating would drop out of school when the school had no toilet because they couldn't change sanitary pads in front of boys. So they dropped out of school and eventually went onto the poverty spiral because they were uneducated and illiterate.
Of course, the spread of disease from flies and polluted water created 2 million deaths from diarrhea every year. When COVID killed 30,000 people, the entire world shut down. But if diarrhea killed 2 million people every year, nothing is alarming. People don't pay attention because diarrhea only kills poor people, and COVID killed middle-class and rich people. This caste system in diseases in the world is what we have to break. That's why I created the World Toilet Organization to put sanitation on center stage.
Keith 05:11
It's interesting you say that because when you think about something like COVID, it doesn't differentiate or discriminate against classes or where you are. But diarrhea is maybe more geographic or location-specific.
If you look at clean water and sanitation, many people put them together, bunching them up and saying that's a joint agenda. You've been very instrumental in pushing for a separate agenda for sanitation and access to clean toilets. Despite its huge cost of not having access to clean toilets, why do people discount it so?
Jack 05:55
The development sector, the NGO sector, spends about $150 billion US a year, and this money comes from donors. The biggest donors are country donors, not philanthropic donors - philanthropic donors are small, country donors are big, and corporate donors are even smaller.
So this $150 billion requires politicians to gain visibility mileage out of it, and only charismatic agendas like water, children, women - things that can elevate political standing - will be marketable and funded. Since sanitation is taboo, and water gets all the attention because photographs of children splashing water being very happy is much better than a photograph of a child squatting in the toilet, it's not marketable.
Because sanitation is not a charismatic agenda, it's lost. I found that if two million people die every year and you cannot talk about it, then you cannot improve. So I took the subject and put it on global media center stage by a unique blend of humor and serious facts. When people laugh at it, they listen to me, and when they saw the facts, they were shocked why people don't talk about it. Over the last 25 years that the World Toilet Organization has existed, we have changed and broken the taboo on sanitation.
Keith 07:46
Maybe we can start with your work here in Singapore at the very beginning when you first started the Restroom Association of Singapore. What were some of the problems with the toilets that you saw and how did you champion change?
Jack 07:57
I was 40 years old, and there was a recession caused by the Asian currency crisis. I had 16 successful companies, but the market was slow, so I was a little bit bored. I have a kind of positive ADHD, so I had to redefine myself - what makes a life meaningful? I had money, I don't worry about money, I had the rest of my 40 years - I'd already spent 40 years.
I was looking for something meaningful to do, and when I read about Goh Chok Tong saying that we should measure the graciousness of our society according to the cleanliness of our public toilets, I thought this wasn't very fair. If the coffee shop owner refuses to clean up the toilet, how could you ask the user to bring brushes, detergent, and squeegees every time they go to lunch? They must all prepare pails and all that to clean the toilet if they want to use one.
You need behavior change, yes, but you also need cleaning, and you also need architectural design. So I started the Restroom Association, and everybody liked it. When the newspaper published it, they said somebody ought to have started this long ago. I was very happy.
We cleaned up a lot of places. Shopping centers used to be very dirty, and we told them they could retain customers and earn more money when customers stay longer. When toilets are clean, people can eat, shop, and impulse buying is very profitable. The shopping centers immediately understood.
We went to schools and said children can concentrate more and get better marks if they don't suppress urination because the toilet is smelly. Teachers and principals got it. The only people who don't get it are the coffee shop owners who say it's better to keep the toilet dirty so nobody uses it. In any case, it doesn't affect their business - they have cheap and delicious food, so everybody comes every day even though the toilet is dirty. They prefer to save $2,000 a month by not cleaning the toilet.
That's why I think in Singapore for the next 60 years, we will have to accept that our coffee shop toilets will continue to be the dirtiest toilets in the whole country. It will never be clean. I'm sorry, I've given up on that one. We will have a blemish in our image as a clean Garden City, and we will never, ever have clean toilets in our coffee shops.
Keith 10:53
I want to double-click on a point. I think what you did well in your work so far is that you essentially tried to solve a demand-supply problem. I think what PM Goh was saying was that consumers should be gracious, which is true, but what's equally true or even more true is that you need better suppliers - the people at the malls, the people actually taking care of the place.
In the past, you actually had to pay 20 cents to enter a toilet, so that's a transaction happening right there. If you're expecting me to pay 20 cents, then I should expect a minimum level of cleanliness.
Jack 11:30
The basic problem is that if the users of the coffee shop and the users of the shopping center are the same, then I asked the NEA why the coffee shop toilets are dirty, because it's the same users.
The NEA's explanation was very simple: "Jack, it's so simple to understand. The shopping centers employ cleaners, and the coffee shops are dirty because of the users."
I said I don't understand. This is making me crazy because where's the logic? It's a double standard. Why don't the coffee shops have cleaners?
They said, "We can employ armies of cleaners." Suddenly the conversation changed to "armies of cleaners."
Then I asked NEA, "Why is it that those hawker centers operated by you employ armies of cleaners?"
They said, "That's because we don't want complaints."
Now you have three or four contradicting explanations: You don't want complaints so your hawker centers are clean; the coffee shops shouldn't employ cleaners; and the shopping centers should employ cleaners. I think they're talking nonsense.
Keith 12:49
So in a sense, what they should really be doing is clamping down, making the cost of dirty toilets more expensive? Because right now, if it's cheap to have a dirty toilet, maybe I'll just pay a fine here and there.
Jack 13:01
So they start to fine people. You know how much they fine? Sometimes they just give a warning letter, and then they fine $500. Now, to clean the toilet costs $2,000 per month, and about 300-400 coffee shops get fined $500 a year, and only about 30% get fined. So 70% of dirty toilets don't get fined.
The coffee shop owner makes this calculation: "Per year it costs me $24,000 to clean up, but I only pay a $500 fine, so I save $23,500. Why not let me keep it dirty and pay the fine?"
The government says, "Jack, you pressure me too much. I'm going to show you - I am shutting them down." I say okay, that's very good. They shut down, I think, five coffee shops for dirty toilets for one day. What's the use of that?
I think the most effective thing is to do podcasts like this, use social media, and tell people never to go to coffee shops that are fined. We should go to the NEA list, which is available but hidden in some very obscure place on their website, of all the people who are fined, and use social media to tell people not to patronize these places. That will incentivize the rest of the coffee shops to say, "Now suddenly it hurts my business. I'm going to clean up," and they will be the same as the shopping centers.
Eventually, people have to speak up against the owners, not against each other, which the NEA would prefer - that you blame the users. "Singaporeans are so bad." They try to gaslight us, and we should not accept being gaslighted. We should stand up and say, "Coffee shop owners, please clean up."
Keith 14:51
There should definitely be more responsibility that coffee shop owners should have regarding clean sanitation in their toilets. But I don't know whether NEA is actively trying to gaslight. I think it's possible, as you work with bureaucracies, that they like to push the blame away - competing agendas, competing priorities. For them, maybe this is not on the list, and maybe our job as citizens is to say, like you did with so many other countries, "I want to push that agenda item even higher."
Jack 15:23
Can you imagine? Over the last 20 years, I managed to work with the Chinese government - 1.4 billion people - to clean up all their public toilets from horrible, much dirtier than Singapore. Today, every public toilet is clean, especially tourism toilets. If you go for tourism in China, you're shocked at how it's cleaner than Singapore.
Finally, the measurement is: Are all our toilets clean? Don't keep blaming the user, because we've been doing that for the last 30 years with no result. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
Keith 16:04
For the most part, our experiences with toilets in Singapore have actually been pleasant. You go to the malls, your office, your home - everyone has access to a clean toilet. So I think most of us, even with the examples you've highlighted, might have underappreciated clean toilets.
Help me understand: when you started the World Toilet Organization, China was one of the big countries you had to help solve clean sanitation for. What were the problems they were facing back then, and what was your approach to solving it?
Jack 16:39
Of course, there was the opportunity that they were hosting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They had such a big urgency to clean up all the public toilets so that it was a "coming of age" party for China to show the world they were ready for business and had quality.
They got Zhang Yimou, who did an amazing opening and closing ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, but if people experienced bad toilets, the media would blemish China on that front. They hosted the World Toilet Summit in 2004, and in four years, we cleaned up, renovated, and built 6,000 public toilet blocks in Beijing alone. The Olympics went very well.
During the World Toilet Summit in 2004, journalists from all over the world asked me what I thought about the situation of toilets in China. My answer was: "We are now in Tiananmen Square. We have this model toilet that is very beautiful, and in the future, every toilet in China will look like this toilet." The media coverage was positive in 2004, and that started the story about how if Beijing could do it, so could Shanghai, Shenzhen, and everywhere else.
We went through a whole series of World Toilet Summits in Shenzhen, Macau, Shanghai, Hainan Island, and eventually, all tourism toilets became clean. When tourism toilets are clean and 90% of tourists are local tourists, it affects the demand for their local public toilets as well. This movement is very powerful.
Now you look at the media in Singapore - instead of positive stories, the media keeps blaming the users. "Singaporeans, hopeless, hopeless, hopeless," and Singaporeans believe that. That's why I tell you I give up on Singapore. I'd better spend my time overseas helping more people.
Keith 18:11
The lesson I learned from this was that you had to appeal to their interests. If it wasn't for the Beijing Olympics, maybe you would have had a harder time getting into China.
Jack 18:25
The other amazing point is that President Xi Jinping appointed himself as the champion of China's toilet revolution. He tabled this three times in the leadership meetings. He actually spoke about this as his personal pet project, so when the leader of a country says that, every province, every city, party secretary, mayor, governor - they all run to show the central government they're doing a good job with toilets.
If Lawrence Wong would say, "I want to be the champion of Singapore's toilet revolution," maybe the MPs would run. Would they run? I don't know, because the NEA definitely doesn't want to run. I've written to the PMO so many times, and they just forward the letter to NEA, where it disappears into a black hole.
Keith 19:32
It's the bureaucracies, right?
Jack 19:35
No, it's not the nature of bureaucracies - it's the nature of Singapore. I've also solved toilet problems in India, and Prime Minister Modi became the champion of the Clean India Mission, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. I worked with him and his team, and he built 110 million toilets. This is another amazing revolution - 110 million toilets, the biggest toilet construction project in the history of mankind.
If you think Modi can do it as head of state, if Xi can do it as head of state, why not Lawrence Wong to make it a political agenda? It's the fastest way because if the Prime Minister says, "I want this to be done. Singapore should have a reputation as a Green Garden City, we are the most livable city in the world, why should we have dirty toilets?"
Keith 20:28
The parallel here, if you look at history, is like when Lee Kuan Yew wanted Singapore to be the Garden City. When he said he really wanted Singapore to be a place with trees everywhere and that he was going to be involved in planting those trees himself, we started to see a lot more buy-in from the government. They obviously supported him because he was the leader. It all starts from the top.
Jack 20:53
We are taxpayers. We are paying for their inefficiency and bad reputation. We are Singapore - we built Marina Bay Financial Center. We can do great things. How come we can't clean up 1,200 coffee shop toilets? We can.
Keith 21:14
You also had to bring clean toilets to India. The impetus for change in India might have been different from China because in China you had the power of the Beijing Olympics - that moment in time where you captured the opportunity and went for it. With India, maybe you didn't have the equivalent. What was the factor that pushed you towards India?
Jack 21:42
When I went to India in 2007, they hosted the World Toilet Summit in the government building, which is the government conference hall. At that time, the Congress Party was in power. We had a meeting with the President of India, President Abdul Kalam, who came to our meeting. The Crown Prince of the Netherlands, who is a water champion, came to our meeting. Six ministers came, and suddenly the whole Indian political community realized they could win votes by promising people toilets.
That started the legitimacy and the competition between the MLAs, which are the MPs, everywhere promising people toilets. They won elections by promising toilets, and if they didn't build them, they lost the next time. That was in 2007, and it built momentum over many years. When Modi came, he promised everyone a toilet - 110 million toilets - and he won a landslide victory. Of course, there were other problems with the corruption of the Congress Party, but one of the reasons was the Clean India Mission, Swachh Bharat. It carried him to three victories, which was amazing.
Also in 2007, the Crown Prince of the Netherlands was at that World Toilet Summit, and he asked me, "Jack, where are all your people?" I said, "Well, you're looking at all the people. I don't have people - it's only me." He was really shocked that I could do seven World Toilet Summits in different countries on such a big scale, and I was alone. I said, "Yeah, nobody will donate money. My agenda is sanitation, so I have no choice. I work for free, and I also pay for my own expenses, hotels, and air tickets." That's the life you want to lead if you want to change something.
Keith 24:17
I want to ask you about raising money in India because I think you have a fascinating story to share. You have this knack for being able to seize opportunities. You managed to get Salman Khan, the Indian Bollywood star, to fundraise for you. Take me through that story.
Jack 24:41
I was invited to the India Today Conclave in 2013, and I was sitting in the audience. I knew Salman Khan was coming, and the security was amazing in that Taj Hotel. I thought this guy must be so important because when Ambani came in the morning, there was no security, but when Salman came, every journalist was rushing from the back door to the front door. They were giving them false leads so that Salman Khan could enter the hotel safely.
I talked to the host, the MC, and asked if I could ask a question when Salman Khan came, and if she could introduce me. She agreed. So when the show started, I asked Salman Khan if he could make a movie on toilets to make toilets sexy. He wondered who I was, and then the host said, "He is Mr. Toilet."
Salman Khan invited me on stage, and through the conversation, we fundraised $140,000 US. He donated the first $20,000 US. Opportunities like this don't come every day, but every time a window of opportunity opens, I see it. That is entrepreneurship.
Keith 26:07
He gave the first $20,000. How did you get the remaining $120,000?
Jack 26:13
From the people there. He called out, "Okay, I'll give $20,000. Anybody else?" Then rich companies like the 40s Group and others stood up and said, "Okay, we'll give." The cameras were on them, so they couldn't back out. It took us six months to collect the money, reminding them they were already on TV and they better pay up, and we got it.
It was on national television, and the next morning when I went through customs, the officer asked, "Are you the one with Salman Khan last night?" I said yes, and suddenly he shouted to all his colleagues. Everybody stopped stamping passports, and they all came to take photographs with me. It was the first time a customs officer treated me so nicely in India.
Keith 27:08
The lesson I got from reading your book and this story is that you really need to have thick skin to grab hold of those opportunities, because they only come once or twice. It's easy to say to have thick skin, but I'm sure at that moment, before you asked that question, your heart was beating hard. I'm sure you were feeling nervous. Kudos to you for seizing the opportunity, because many of us now glamorize having the courage to ask, but not many people actually act on it.
Jack 28:43
Actually, I wasn't nervous at all because it was fun. I was just thinking, "Hey, I can do this, maybe I can try that." Of course, of all the things you've seen me succeed at, there are another 100 times that I failed, but nobody knows about those. It's not about being nervous or worried - it's just fun. If you have fun doing it, you keep seeing opportunities.
Keith 29:09
There's another thread in your story about the World Toilet Organization, also known as WTO, which can be confused with the World Trade Organization. You say that was intentional?
Jack 29:24
Yes, because if nobody wants to talk about toilets, the best way is to get the World Trade Organization to sue me. Calling ourselves the WTO would be the best opportunity, and after they sue me, we'd have a lot of media coverage. We'd argue, and we probably wouldn't pay any money because people sue you when you have money, but NGOs have no money, so there was no risk.
I thought playing that pun was very good, and it turned out to be successful. Eventually, I met Pascal Lamy, the head of the WTO, at one of the World Economic Forum meetings, and he said to me, "You know, I know you. You are the more active WTO than mine." So we weren't disliked - we were welcomed by the world, except by the NEA in Singapore.
Keith 30:24
I'm sure there is other work that you're doing now with the Singapore government that actually helps push Singapore in other areas of development - cultural, economic, and sanitation as well.
Jack 30:36
Just to not forget, I want to express gratitude to MFA, who helped me table the UN resolution for the World Toilet Organization founding day, November 19th, to become the official UN World Toilet Day. That was a very big partnership with the Singapore government. MFA, I would like to thank them on air - they really did this for the world.
The World Toilet Day is now celebrated and commemorated every year, and a lot of policy changes are published on World Toilet Day around the world. I just met last week with the UN Special Envoy for Water. They didn't say "water and sanitation" but whenever they say "water," they mean "water and sanitation" - but they don't write it.
The Special Envoy was the former Foreign Affairs Minister of Indonesia, Ms. Retno Marsudi, and I met her in Jakarta. She said, "We know all your credentials, we're very appreciative that you want to offer your help, and I would like to give you the sanitation portion of my work. As much as you can do, please let's do it together." I'm very happy to work for free for this lady at the UN level. The UN is bureaucratic, but its legitimacy is very important.
After our meeting, she tweeted to say Jack Sim flew all the way from Singapore to meet her and that we want to work together. I think there's a lot of goodwill out there. The World Toilet Organization is actually a soft power of Singapore that MFA has to start thinking about how to use. Singapore is famous in the world as a money place, where billionaires go, where tax concessions are good, where the country is livable and safe - except for coffee shop toilets, but rich people don't go there.
The soft power of Singapore is very little. We have hard power, we have money power, we have influence, but are we kind? I think the World Toilet Organization can show the face of kindness of Singapore to the world. The last 25 years has been a good journey of helping not just India and China.
We also went to Brazil, and I lobbied the Brazilian Senate to pass a law to privatize all their sewage treatment plants, their wastewater treatment plants, because they didn't have money to invest. We had to privatize all their state-owned sewage treatment plants - 94% state-owned - by passing a law to allow private-public partnerships, foreign investment, local commercial investment, and turn them into for-profit wastewater treatment plants.
Keith 34:07
How did you lobby the senators?
Jack 34:15
The slum areas, the favelas, have such big voting banks, and the union voting banks are so small. The unions of the water company were against privatization, and I told the senators, "You shouldn't be afraid of the union votes. Just lose these tens of thousands of votes and win the 100 million votes, and you're good." Politicians go for the big vote because it's popular.
The Senators voted 65 out of 79 in favor, and the law was passed because I tipped the scale. Now $4 billion US is invested in Brazilian sewage treatment plants. I went there two years ago to see the sewage connection, and the favela people are very happy because their drains are no longer full of waste, there are no flies around, and children are playing happily.
This is the gratification that I feel - I feel so happy seeing people happy. They said to me, "This is the result of you changing the law." If I can speak English to Portuguese-speaking people through an interpreter and convince them, how come I cannot convince Singapore's NEA? I have to give up.
Keith 35:41
The design of the Singapore system is to encourage you to give up.
Jack 35:46
So I give up.
Keith 35:52
You've done so many other things, other areas of collaboration with the government that you've been able to succeed in. It's not designed for us to give up; maybe we face some inertia. You have this optimism when it comes to changing situations across the globe, so I hope you don't lose that. You also have an upcoming collaboration with the government with SG Batik, right? That's something you're still working on, so maybe in some areas you might face challenges.
Jack 36:15
They are not the NEA, so MCCY - I convinced them that for SG60, Singapore needs to have our own National Dress. Why are our government officials and politicians wearing batik that looks like Indonesian batik? We have to design our own design language that is distinctively Singapore batik.
We're organizing an SG Batik contest, launching and getting every designer in Singapore and all over the world to submit Singapore batik designs. I hope it's not a Merlion, but it should go deep into our DNA, how we feel as Singaporeans.
As you know, so many new foreign citizens are coming because our birth rate is falling and our population is rising. We need clothing to have a similar identity to unite people. I think this contest - they gave us a very small fund - but I hope it will be the start of having the same contest every year and designing more and more batik.
When I went to Indonesia, every province's batik is unique in its design language. We should consider having a unique design here, and I hope it can be the beginning of a new unification of everybody with a national dress.
Keith 38:01
The batik is an interesting material as well. It's uniquely Southeast Asian in two senses: one, it's extremely regional, so you don't see Europeans wearing batik a lot, but it represents Southeast Asia. At the same time, we can have our own Singaporean adaptation.
Jack 38:24
I think our language could be hawker food, which is a UNESCO heritage. If you iconize the row of ducks and chickens hanging on the hawker stalls, it's almost like choreography - they're dancing. The duck heads are all tilted on the same side - it's almost like ballet.
Why don't we convert that into design icons? Everyone owns an HDB flat - 80% of us - and the HDB flats look bland, but if you start iconizing them, you start to codify them, it can be a very nice design language. Other things like National Service - I think there are a lot of things that form our identity, but we just don't codify them. Now is the time to do it with SG60.
Keith 39:20
To have a symbol that we can wear on us as well. One of the things I've noticed throughout your career is that you have a certain knack for working with bureaucracies. Obviously, you have challenges with some agencies within our government, but you've been successful with SG Batik and with foreign governments as well. Walk me through how you work with bureaucrats or politicians in general.
Jack 39:46
I got so frustrated that I went to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy when I was 52 years old to study how to be a bureaucrat. I graduated at 56 with a Master's in Public Administration. I wasn't looking for a job - I was already 56 years old.
I came out with four "Jacks" maxims. If you have an innovative idea and you propose it to bureaucrats, the first "Jack" is to reject, because they don't have to do extra work if they reject, and there's no risk.
If you insist, they will do the second "Jack" called eject - they push a button and send you to other agencies. You run around, lose your energy, and give up. That's the whole design - designed for you to give up.
If you still come back and insist, they will do the third "Jack" called deject. Deject means "I can't say yes, I can't say no, don't call us, we'll call you." They drag it until your battery goes flat.
But if you still have a little energy left, you go to the top and talk to somebody higher - maybe a minister or a PS or somebody high up. If that person likes your idea, suddenly the bureaucrats will activate the fourth "Jack" - it's called hijack. It becomes their idea: "All the time I was supporting Jack. I wanted this idea to happen." They will take it, but whether they follow up depends on whether they get posted out, because every three or four years, they circulate people, and then the idea goes away again.
So it's important that after understanding public policy, I go straight to the top. I don't want to waste time on middle management. I go to the top, the top asks the middle management, I let them hijack it, and then we start to work as partners. There's no point grumbling with middle management.
For example, in Katong Park, buried under the park (the MRT station is below, but under the park) is an 1880 historic fort called Fort Tanjong Katong. I discovered this more than 30 years ago and have been working with the National Heritage Board and NParks to resurrect it.
At one time, we actually dug out the whole park and saw that the entire park is a fort. It was in the newspaper, front page, center fold, and then they buried it back and built the MRT station. I kept telling them to promote it, and now after 30 years, NParks has finally agreed to formally build a fort cafe on the park to commemorate and educate people that there's a fort buried there. They're putting up new signboards and exposing some parts of the park.
I'm going to donate to build two concrete cannons out there to popularize it. In fact, I built two British soldier statues, red-colored, looking like cannons, and I placed them illegally along Fort Road. People liked them, and the government didn't take them away. Now they've made it official that it was approved.
I do illegal things, I do naughty things, but I love my country. I do things for my country. I'm willing to go to jail if the government thinks I'm a bad guy. I'll just go to jail, and then the public will say, "How come Jack Sim is a good guy and you're sending him to jail?" So I don't think they will send me to jail.
Keith 44:12
What drives this incessant desire to do things outside the box that most civil servants or most people would say is a bit more conventional? Why do you find yourself championing for toilets, writing angry emails? What drives you to do this?
Jack 44:33
This word "gumption" - "The Gumption of Mr. Toilet," this book is not just about toilets. It's about having gumption, which means the curiosity, the courage, the compassion, the commitment, the collaboration, the communication, and also much needed, the commitment to see it through.
In the age of AI, gumption is so important. That's why I want everybody to read this book because it explains what is needed to make a better society.
Jack 45:11
You see, everybody is unhappy about something, and they expect the government to fix it. The government is not that clever - they're good enough for certain tasks, but for the rest, we have to do it ourselves. We must not be afraid that because we love our country, they will send us to jail. I don't think so.
I think we've got to be constructive, not destructive. If we just destroy things, then of course it's not right. But I have always thought of solutions, yet they keep rejecting me. That's why the more they reject me, the more I go outside the country, and the world gets better. I think it's all right because impacting at the billion level is better than impacting at the 6 million level.
Keith 45:54
I'd say you've been critical, and I think that's actually a citizen's right - to be critical. But at the same time, you've followed up your words with action, and I think that's even more important because everyone can criticize, but not everyone is willing to get their hands dirty.
Jack 46:12
I think if you're criticizing and not offering solutions, you're actually very lazy. You have to follow through on your beliefs. But then you meet the lazy bureaucrat who rejects you, so you start your own activism. You always worry they're going to put you in jail or fine you or whatever, but after a while, I think if they do that, the political cost to them is higher than to me.
I've never experienced jail, so maybe it's nice to broaden my range of exposure and enter jail for a month or something. Probably won't be very long. I think this way, but most people have jobs they cannot afford to lose. So people like me who have no job are probably in a better position, and it's a privilege to be able to speak up.
Keith 47:27
You've been very vocal about rejecting materialism, in the sense that we shouldn't chase material things our whole life. For a very long time, WTO, like you said earlier, was run by one person or a very lean team. You've been doing this pretty much as volunteer work for maybe the past 28 years.
Jack 47:43
For free, for 28 years.
Keith 47:49
What should one think about living life in a different way, a life similar to yours?
Jack 48:01
The purpose of making money is to be free from money. How to be free from money is you work very hard to make money, and then you live a very simple life that you can afford after that.
When you reach financial independence, you should not trade time with money anymore, because selling time to buy money is important when your time costs less than money. But if your time is more valuable than money, then you should not do a loss-making business by selling something more precious for something you're not going to use, because you don't need extra money.
I think life is like two stages: you need to secure yourself, and then you go out and secure others.
Keith 48:55
What I really admire about you is that you follow through on your words and put yourself in the firing line of not just bureaucratic pressure, but also maybe ridicule. I think a lot of people might have said when you were starting out, "The Restroom Association? Toilets? Why toilets?" You essentially shifted the Overton window - you changed the way people talk about toilets. That's something that I don't think is common enough on most issues or taboo issues, and that's something more people can learn from you.
Jack 49:29
In everything, when I first began, all my business friends had lunch with me and said, "Jack, so you started this new Restroom Association, World Toilet Organization. How are you going to make money? I'm sure you're going to make money from this."
I said, "No, I'm not making any money. I have no salary. I'm just doing it for fun. I feel very fulfilled and happy doing this."
They said, "Don't tell me about that. Tell me the secret - how do you make money?" I said, "I don't make money."
They said, "No, no, we're going to observe you to call your bluff." So four years later, the same group of guys invited me for lunch again, and this time they said, "Jack, we've been watching you for four years, and we realized you didn't make any money from this. But now we know why you're doing this."
I asked why, and they said, "You want to join the PAP, right? You're trying to build your profile." It's crazy! These Singaporean business friends are all thinking you must have some ulterior motive.
I explained to them that feeling good is a reward. You buy a new dress or shoes to feel good, you go on holiday to feel good, and if you do good to feel good, that's also a reward. But somehow I couldn't convince them, and to this day, they must be very disappointed that I haven't joined the PAP.
Keith 51:16
As you look forward ahead, what is next for an organization like WTO? You've solved a huge part of the sanitation problem, but there are still problems that linger. What are the problems that you think the next leap of WTO should try to solve?
Jack 51:33
For WTO, the next step is for me to find a good executive director to bring the World Toilet Organization into its 2.0 version, and then to hand over all administration, finance, everything, and fundraising. Probably the next group of people will be better than me, and they can continue the evangelism and storytelling.
I feel that my main skill, probably the only skill, is storytelling, and storytelling is very powerful. But I'm not a manager. I've run 16 companies, but I always employ managers - I'm the entrepreneur.
I think the organization can grow by leaps and bounds. It's Singapore's only made-in-Singapore global NGO, and it has a brand that is so big. I hope the Singapore government can use it as soft power.
I'm now setting up a WTO Center at NUS. That will form a legacy. I'm looking for a big donor to create an endowment between 11 to 15 million Singapore dollars, with naming rights. If anybody is listening, please call me if you know somebody. This endowment will create the center with a professor who will take that job forever, and that's a legacy to be left behind.
I've left behind the legacy of writing this book - it takes a lot of brain energy to write a book. I have a biopic that is one and a half hours called "Mr. Toilet: The World's #2 Man." That movie is entertainment, so students watch it. When I was at Yukan Secondary School, the principal let the students watch it, and they loved it. The Q&A session was so long - the secondary school students queued all the way out of the assembly hall into the corridor, and the questions never ended because more and more students kept asking. The principal said, "I've never had students asking so many questions," but it was because they watched your movie.
Now I'm working with them to hopefully get Tanjong Katong Secondary School to take this up as curriculum for MOE.
Keith 54:29
So maybe for you, the next area of problems you want to solve in the coming years is more in the education space?
Jack 54:41
Education space, yes. I also built an SDG Center at Ubi MRT Station, a 65,000 square foot building to house all the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) activities. Fortunately, the Singapore Red Cross Humanitarian Academy is now occupying the third story. UNITAR of the UN is now moving in, and I hope to slowly build it as a World Trade Center for the poor.
Four billion people in the world are still poor, and there's no reason they cannot copy the Singapore model - Third World to First World, Lee Kuan Yew's model. I think this is again another soft power to end global poverty the way China copied Singapore, Rwanda copied Singapore. We have the DNA to teach every poor country how to get out of poverty.
Keith 55:34
If you were to give advice to someone who's coming out of university and looking to make their mark in the world, what advice would you give?
Jack 55:47
I would say to them: life is very short, like 85 years. I time myself with a countdown to 80 years because the last five years are often very sick and not very useful.
As of today, I can tell you exactly how many days I have left. I have exactly 4,433 days to my 80th birthday, which I call my expiry date. If you have only so many days - life is 29,200 days from birth to 80 years - and if you don't spend this time properly, you just waste this opportunity to live a wholesome life.
The question you have to ask yourself is: What do I want to tell myself when I'm 80 years old? Do I want to say I played all the computer games, I had many holidays, I went shopping and bought some branded goods? Is that the meaning of your life?
The answer is personal, but it's good to ask this question: Going to that last day before you close your eyes and say goodbye to all your people in the hospital bed, what would you want to say to yourself that would give you fulfillment?
In everything, when you face a choice between doing something meaningful or just accumulating more stuff, think about what story you want to tell at the end of your life. We each have only around 29,200 days - use them wisely, use them for something that matters. That's how you find true fulfillment.