Transit’s missing link: The public toilet

This case study illustrates how the lack of a public restroom on a key route can render transit unusable for many riders and what community members can do to fight back. When it opened in late 2016, riders changing buses at an expensive new transit center in Washington State were dismayed to find they had…

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New documentary breaks taboos to explore America’s wastewater infrastructure

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Documentary filmmaker Karina Mangu-Ward is going to make a splash with FLUSH, which premieres worldwide on November 15th, 2017.  Mangu-Ward’s images are captivating, the editing is excellent, and the film features some of North America’s most important sanitation heroes. It will change the way you think about poop. We here at the other PHLUSH (Public Hygiene Lets Us…

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Global Homeless Day: Toilet Solutions from France for the USA

“The restroom thus becomes a tool for figuring out just how a society functions – what it values, how it separates people from one another, and the kinds of trade-offs that come to be made,” says sociologist Harvey Moltoch. While we at PHLUSH believe in safe and accessible toilets for all people (families, children, those…

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GottaGo! campaigning for public toilets in Ottawa

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This guest blog post is from Joan Kuyek of GottaGo!. The GottaGo! campaign in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, is advocating for a network of open clean, accessible public toilets and water fountains in key places in the region. Currently, the only public toilets in Ottawa are in recreation centres, libraries and large parks. When the programming…

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Toilets around the World

This guest blog post is from Mary Landwer for World Toilet Day 2013. Please check out our ToiletsUSA page for more info. Follow #ToiletsUSA, #LiftTheLid, and #CelebrateTheToilet. Thanks to a popular children’s book, we understand from an early age that Everybody Poops. What many don’t understand, though, is that not everyone has a toilet to do it in.…

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Stories from the Street: PSU team explores toiletlessness

July 1, 2013 Students from Portland State University’s Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Affairs and Planning, have recently completed a project on the consequences of toiletlessness. After spending the winter academic term on background and planning, the Right to Relief team spent the spring term exploring the issues in collaboration with PHLUSH.  They hit…

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Celebrate First Flush of Portland Loo #5 at 1 pm Jan 31st

Isn’t it weirdly cool that we live in a city that celebrates the first flush of every new Portland Loo?  Actually, these repeated inaugurals tell us something.  A product has met a need.  The city has provided a service citizens think is important. People are using the Loo and talking about it.  The co-location of…

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Urinals complete Victoria BC streetscape.

Victoria, the genteel provincial capital of British Columbia, has been quite sophisticated in addressing the troublesome issue of public urination.  For the past five years the city has been funding street toilets and appears to have good public support.  There are lessons to be learned. During the early days of PHLUSH, we were interested in…

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It's high time for 21st century design.

Why are we still are building public restroom facilities designed for mid 20th century families rather than for the dynamic twenty-first century global society in which we now live?    A rethink of public restroom design would solve the dilemma that Lisa A. Fram outlines in  Men? Women? Parents Face Public Bathroom Dilemma: How old…

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Journalists breaking the pee and poop barrier

Several solid pieces of journalism  have burst on the scene recently and threaten to break through our society’s prevailing “flush and forget” mind set “A Fecal Matter” The cover story in the June 2nd Willamette Week takes on Portland’s sewers.  Pulitizer-prize winning Nigel Jaquiss looks at the city’s groaning infrastructure, salutes the engineer-heros in the…

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