Lack of public toilets has been a bane for our society as it creates unhygienic conditions and add to the disease causing germs. Worse is the plight of the women. Forced to use open spaces and community toilets far from their homes, they are vulnerable to not only urine infection but also criminal elements. According to UNICEF reports, around 595 million people defecate in the open in India leading to health, environmental and security hazards.
Three key factors have severely hampered providing community toilets –– limitation of water and sewage utilities and lack of manpower to clean them regularly. Amit Mittal, a civil engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee has designed a Magic Genie Toilet, which is eco-tech smart green toilet which saves water, avoids pollution of water bodies and is not dependent on manpower thus helping in elimination of scavenging. Being mobile, it can be installed anywhere and relocated if need be.
Vidya Singh, a homemaker a regular shopper at Faridabad 16 market was initially reluctant to use Magic Genie. “I thought it must be unhygienic like other public toilets. To my surprise it cleans itself and is neither damp nor wet.” With nearly two decades of experience in waste and facilities management business, Mittal says a toilet facility is a service where water, sewage and manpower are critical components. “Even if one of them is missing, the solution is incomplete,” he says. Cutting out dependence on water and sewage, the eco-toilet, segregates human effluents into solid and liquid. The liquid is treated for reusing for flushing and cleaning while the solid is stored in a cartridge kept well below the toilet floor. “It is ensured that there is no bacterial activity to knock out odour. Removed after a period of three to six months, it is converted into compost,” explains Mittal.
To keep the toilet spic and span its floor is perforated with pressure pump installed below. Triggered by a sensor each time the door is opened for use and shut after use, it sucks all the dirt/ waste. All the processes are IT enabled and monitored continuously. Any fault is logged on the server enabling despatching of manpower to rectify it immediately.
Developed over a period of two years, A2Z Infra Services headed by Mittal, is ready with eco-toilet and has already installed four in Faridabad, one each at Gurgaon and at the Shri Khajrana Ganesh Mandir, Indore. “These have been installed after getting the required permission to check their satisfactory working,” he says.
For making them economically viable, Mittal has worked out some models. One involves installing and maintaining with the civic authorities paying for them. In another he intends to monetise the cost and running expenses through hoardings and advertising rights. “If installed at bus stops, railway stations, highways, heritage places, industrial complexes, cinema halls and markets, they are bound to get footfalls thus making them ideal for putting up hoardings and publicity material.” But he insists on charges being levied for use. “Only when services are paid for, are they valued. These toilets can be manned by the unemployed enabling them to earn.”
