Time for Portland Parks to take toilets seriously

The cost-cutting recommendations of Portland Parks and Recreation’s Budget Advisory Committee call for 189 toilet closures    The proposal is for Parks to replace half the number of closed stalls with plastic portables while laying off the Parks Technicians who understand the social environment and perform many other duties besides cleaning restrooms and hauling away trash. (UPDATE: PP&R’s official…

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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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Building Safe Toilet Design into Shared Urban Space

  That’s the title of our paper presented at the recent World Toilet Summit in Hainan, China.   PHLUSH believes that public toilets should be as much a part of the streetscape as sidewalks and street lamps. But as public restroom advocates all over North America know, it’s an uphill battle. For many public officials the…

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Will no-mix toilets work on San Francisco streets?

At PHLUSH we’ve been looking at urine diversion technologies and think no-mix toilets are going to be really important in the future.  And we’re keen to get the word out as we consider earthquake preparedness and what to do for emergency household toilets when we can’t flush.  So a proposal, picked up by the New York Times,…

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Three-year old inaugurates Jamison Square Loo

The forth in a walkable chain of Portland Loos was inaugurated under sunny skies this week.  The honors of the First Flush went to three-year old Clark Bradley, standing here with his Mom and City Commissioner Randy Leonard in front of Loo with its colorful door designed by graphic artist Sarah Fine.The Loo stands across the…

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Portland celebrates World Toilet Day

November 19th brings Americans an opportunity to talk about and even have fun with an issue they rarely discuss in public – toilets.   As a member of the World Toilet Organization, PHLUSH took advantage of World Toilet Day to get the word out about the global situation, to celebrate the opening of a new…

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Schools worldwide are getting kids to talk toilets.

Schools worldwide are getting kids to talk toilets.   Although the Summit didn’t focus on educating kids about sanitation and toilet use in their schools, the importance programs in schools was salient.  It seems to be something everyone is doing.  And the messages flow from the school to home and community. Tan Puay Hoon introduced…

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Guest Post: Code change is the best way to increase restroom availability

By Robert Brubaker, Program Manager, American Restroom Association Code change is the best way to increase restroom availability. 090809rb 8:23 am 090809cm   1:45 pm   546 words A State code expert from Kansas,  Eirene Oliphant has submitted potty parity code change proposals that address some of the ‘long line’ problems women face waiting to…

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Documentary "People Can't Wait" now available on line!

Interviewed about the shortage of public restrooms in downtown Portland and the resulting  inconvenience, PHLUSH Co-Founder Tom Carrollo notes that “people can’t wait”.    This axiom provided the title of a short documentary on the Portland Loo, which premiered to a full house at the Hollywood Theater on Wednesday night.   People Can’t Wait from shieldsfilms.com…

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Hillary Clinton visits public toilets at Mercy Corps site in Indonesia

On Thursday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited a public toilet complex in the Petojo residential area in central Jakarta near where Obama lived as a boy.  The best part of this is that Portland-based Mercy Corps is a part of this USAID-funded project. It’s great to see USAID finally using our tax dollars…

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