In 2017, we made progress toward our goals against a background of hurricanes, homelessness, and a new awareness of human needs that underlines the significance of our work. We invite you to download our 2017 PHLUSH Annual Report. The deadly consequences of hygiene facilities that came too late Public toilet and hygiene facilities protect...
We’ve been taking a closer look at contemporary restrooms and see some excellent trends in their design, namely inclusion, privacy, efficiency, and convenience. INCLUSION Inclusive, gender-neutral restrooms serve everyone from those caring for opposite sex children or elders to gender non-conforming people. Unlike single...
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...
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...
All citizens who pee and poop, that’s everyone, need to know how to safely take care of toileting when the luxury of a ‘flush and forget’ mentality is no longer an option. Natural disasters, such as recent Hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria, alter our...
The reluctance of Southern California’s local governments to provide public restrooms has resulted in a public health crisis. (For updates, see comments at end) San Diego County reports Hepatitis A is the cause of death of 16 people, 14 of which were unhoused citizens...
Dear Orange County Board of Supervisors: Our organization Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human (PHLUSH) was appalled at the forced removal of portable toilets located along the banks of the Santa Ana River as reported in a recent article from The Guardian. These toilets...
Welcome to the PHLUSH live blog of World Water Week 2017. PHLUSH Program Manager Carol McCreary is live blogging (using Twitter) the event in Stockholm, Sweden from August 27th to September 1st. The event program is here. The exhibitors are here. If you want...
This post is by PHLUSH board member Kyle Earlywine. He also runs his own toilet business and blog. He is a passionate advocate for dignified sanitation for those living without homes. Why do homeless people need toilets? For most people, access to a toilet...
Access to water and sanitation are human rights! But saying this is not enough to get a commitment from governments. We need to engage and persuade public officials who are likely to have limited funding and competing priorities. We need to understand their priorities...
The other day in a rest stop there was a classic motivational poster with the word S.E.R.V.I.C.E. No doubt this was aimed to demonstrate their commitment to keeping things tidy, but for me it resonated with my current service on the PHLUSH Board of...
It’s official. PHLUSH has earned recognition as a nonprofit by the IRS. We are thrilled to announce that our growing organization is moving forward as a 501(c)3. PHLUSH started out as a small community group responding to a lack of toilets in downtown Portland....
PHLUSH is an all-volunteer organization; our volunteers respond to calls from local agencies and organizations. This ethos brings together a group of motivated professionals working all across North America on diverse sanitation issues. We are proud to feature the work of Anna Preble. Her...
Public toilets have long been at the forefront of human rights advocacy in the United States. During the past year, the transgender community and parents of young children who identify with a gender other than their birth sex have successfully advocated for laws requiring...
When we heard about a company providing portable composting toilets for events in the Pacific Northwest, we wanted to learn more. So we got in touch with Nicole Cousino, founder of Nature Commode. Is this your first start up? Nature Commode is my first...
Editor’s Note We recently had the opportunity to meet 17-year old Nadya Okamoto, who founded the Camions of Care, a 501c3 nonprofit in Portland, Oregon. In the past year Camions of Care team members have distributed more than 6,000 care packages of feminine hygiene...
This guest post from Gill Kemp, leader of Truckers’ Toilets UK and committee member of the British Toilet Association, is last in our series to celebrate World Toilet Day – TODAY – November 19 with the launch of PHLUSH Public Toilet Advocacy Toolkit. The...
This guest post from Rhonda Cheryl Solomon, master’s degree in Regional and Urban Planning Studies and proprietor of the Gotta Go: Examining Public Toilet Provision in the City blog, is third in our series to celebrate World Toilet Day on November 19 with the...
This guest post from People for Fairness Coalition (PFFC) is second in our series to celebrate World Toilet Day on November 19 with the launch of PHLUSH Public Toilet Advocacy Toolkit. People living in, working in, and visiting European and Asian capitals take it...
To celebrate World Toilet Day on November 19, PHLUSH is launching a Public Toilet Advocacy Toolkit. Today, we also begin a series of guest blog posts on restroom initiatives. The first in our series is by Kaitlin Krull. She is an Austin, Texas writer...
“Legalize Sustainable Sanitation” is Molly Danielsson Winter’s prepared testimony on behalf of H.375, the bill that is currently under review in Vermont to expand and incentivize the use of ecological toilets and greywater systems. Molly is Director of Recode, a Portland-based nonprofit whose mission...
Hearings in the Vermont House of Representatives earlier this month give a penetrating and carefully documented look into the issues we are researching at PHLUSH. House Bill 375, sponsored by Representative Teo Zagar seeks to expand and incentivize the use of ecological toilets and...
With last Friday’s whimsical 5K walk, activists at the University of California at Santa Cruz focused attention on often-evaded issues. “Slugs to Sludge” was created as a playful way to raise awareness of sewage infrastructure and the water it requires, and to advocate for...
“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...
Living houseless in an urban environment requires personal savvy and logistic skill. Days are often an endless series of searches, lines, and waits: finding the next meal, a safe place to sleep, a public restroom. Here at PHLUSH, we see toilet availability as a...
Guest post by Stephen Thomas of Watershed Management Group. Every day, the average person flushes 10 gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet. This constitutes a waste of two precious resources: scarce water supplies and human manure, which could instead be composted to...
World Toilet Day on November 19 brought such a deluge of articles, new reports, infographics, and videos that it’s taken us until now to work through them. International media outlets, when compared to those in the United States, often better convey dynamic technicalities of...
World Toilet Day is now officially celebrated by the United Nations every year on November 19th to bring attention to the 2.5 billion of our fellow humans who lack access to clean safe toilets. In the United States, clean, comfortable restrooms are a common expectation whether we...
Providing toilets to 2.4 billion of our fellow humans without them and building sanitary infrastructure that controls the spread of Ebola and other contagious killers calls for widespread training. Starting October 13, 2014, Eawag, (the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), in collaboration with EPFL (the École Polytechnique...
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...
This guest blog post is from Atara Jaffe. Sustainability. From mainstream media to blogs, sustainability is not just a buzzword, but is frequently used as a term to embody practices related to survival. Everyone from homeowners to architects are incorporating “sustainability” tactics to slowly transform...
This guest blog post is from Sanjay Banka. At PHLUSH, we’ve been tracking some of the cool new technologies in India. After noticing the social enterprise awards won by Banka BioLoo, we suggested they write for our readers. Mixing business with socio-environmental good is...
This guest blog post is from Doneice Sandoval of Lava Mae. When you think about people who lack access to sanitation, people in Africa and India or other third-world countries come to mind. You don’t think of people in the U.S. The truth, however, is that...
This guest blog post is by John Gonzalez from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District for World Toilet Day 2013. Please check out our ToiletsUSA page for more info. Follow #ToiletsUSA, #LiftTheLid, and #CelebrateTheToilet. Your ability to “flush and forget” is taken for granted. Period. In the...
This guest blog post is from Murat Sahin from UNICEF for World Toilet Day 2013. Please check out our ToiletsUSA page for more info. Follow #ToiletsUSA, #LiftTheLid, and #CelebrateTheToilet. The theme of the second annual Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) Virtual Conference to be held on 21...
This guest blog post is from Kyle Earlywine from Green Flush Technologies for World Toilet Day 2013. Please check out our ToiletsUSA page for more info. Follow #ToiletsUSA, #LiftTheLid, and #CelebrateTheToilet. At risk of sounding like an old Mastercard commercial, some things are just priceless –...
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