World Toilet Day

A blog by Dr Rebecca Evans.

Happy World Toilet Day 2024!

For many years, I have been a collector of Toilet Signs. None really beats the one at London St. Pancras Station (pictured above). It always begs the question; do people routinely throw spectacles, fish, apples and socks down the toilet?!

But of course, we should really understand that toilets are NOT waste bins.  In many countries I have visited, you shouldn’t even throw toilet paper down the loo. ‘Pee or poo’ only, as some signs say. Because what we flush has got to go somewhere, for the pee and poo to settle out, and leave us with water that can enter our environment or be recycled.  Everything else is just a pollutant (and can cause nasty blockages in the system).

So why is it that one in four items found on UK beaches are menstrual products? Menstrual pads are still sold to us as ‘disposable’ and in some cases ‘flushable’ but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Menstrual pads contain plastic which is not biodegradable and chemicals which are toxic, and they should not enter the water courses, let alone be released into the oceans.

The sad fact is, that menstruators are put in a very difficult position when it comes to the disposal of menstrual products. Not all public toilets have suitable waste receptacles. The ‘sanitary bins’ provided by some companies have small openings that have fancy mechanisms preventing oxygen getting to the bloodied material, which can cause a bad smell. The downside of this is that the opening is small, and usually blocked by the previous user’s pad that has stuck in the fancy mechanism. Nobody wants to touch somebody else’s pad, so pads are piled on top and then end up overspilling onto the floor, making a very unpleasant environment for all users. 

Once when I was at Warwick University, I set a competition to design students to come up with a better sanitary bin. We won the design competition, but I have yet to see something like this rolled out in real life.

Another problem that has not been addressed by the designers of toilet ‘furniture’ is a place to deal with non-disposable products such as re-usable cloth pads, panties or the menstrual cup. Where are you supposed to deal with the blood?  It would be helpful to have a little sink to wash the material or cup out. I have seen little sinks incorporated into the top of cisterns. Why isn’t this universal? 

If we make it easier for people to deal with their menstrual products in toilet spaces, hopefully we will see a shift away from disposables and towards more environmentally-friendly products. If we can’t do that, we can at least dispose of disposables properly, ie not down the loo!