Successful advocacy grows from awareness of our shared values of human rights, comfort and dignity.
Toilets are a human rights issue. The provision of well managed cost effective toilets is catalyzed by attitude change. This change invites reflection on our shared values of human rights, comfort and dignity as well as on practical need of all people to have access to restrooms when they are away from home.
For an issue as universal and human as public restrooms, there are huge gaps in research and policy. According to the American Restroom Association’s Robert Brubraker, these result from the difficulty of getting people to report on individual need related to incontinence. Successful advocacy is often leveraged by an individual who steps forward to report an embarrassing accident. Embarrassment about not having a toilet when one needs one is universal. The public reacts with a deep sense of identification, compassion and outrage.
Focus interests of diverse stakeholders to create demand for public restrooms.
PHLUSH research shows that successful advocacy for public toilets in US cities often emerges from a common scenario. A weak economy leads to a tattered social safety net through which more and more citizens fall. Homeless people seeking emergency services become a more visible presence on the streets. The business community reacts by pressuring city councils to pass ordinances to restrict the presence of the poor in downtown areas. Such measures, or the threat of them, mobilizes citizen groups. Their advocacy is successful when property owners, retailers, social service providers, health officials, tourism boards, mass transit authorities, pedestrian and cycling advocates and downtown workers and residents all realize that public toilets are in their own best interest.
Lay out the options for citizens and official to consider and choose.
Following six months of study, PHLUSH researchers reported to the community and concluded with six options for increasing restroom availability. Each option begins with a vision, outlines physical facilities and management alternative and lists steps “to make it happen.”
PHLUSH Option 1: Upgrading Existing Public Toilets and Keeping Them Open
PHLUSH Option 2: Public Sanitation Units in Parking Lots
PHLUSH Option 3: Storefront Rest Stop
PHLUSH Option 4: Automatic Public Toilets
PHLUSH Option 5: Private Initiative to Revitalize an Historic Comfort Station
PHLUSH Option 6: An Artist-Designed Toilet
This approach has worked. Significant action has been taken by the city of Portland on five of the options. Option 4 responded to inquiries from fellow Portlanders at the time but was quickly ruled out when more attractive alternatives became clear. Indeed, cities such as Seattle and Atlanta have been forced to remove their Automatic Public Toilets because they fell far short of expectation. Fortunately, Portland did not make the same mistake.
“Sanitation is 
Dignity” is a traveling exhibit of theGerman Toilet Organization that asks the question “Where would you hide?” It is designed to break the toilet taboo, raise public awareness of the worldwide sanitation situation and raise political and public willingness to match financial commitments for sanitation with those for water. The GTO makes the exhibit available to advocacy groups worldwide.
Among the advocacy resources of the World Toilet Association are games, songs, poetry, fact sheets and graphics plus lists of organizations, print materials, and recent toilet inventions.
British Toilet Association Founded in 1998, BTA represents the interests and aspirations of ‘away from home’ toilet providers, suppliers and users of all types and acts as the catalyst for change in the pursuit of standards of excellence in all areas of public toilet provision and management.
Loo of the Year Awards recognize the best places “to go” in the British Isles, Ireland and the Channel Islands. LOYA develops the inspection criteria on which nominations and awards are based. The awards are promoted by the British Toilet Association and now incorporate an Attendant of the Year award as well.
The International Year of Sanitation offers Key Messages which explain how sanitation is vital for health and a good economic investment that contributes to social development and helps the environment.
