Advanced Search

The story appears on

Page A15

November 29, 2016

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Sanitation, convenience when nature calls

By Wu Huixin | November 29, 2016, Tuesday | Print Edition

BELIEVE it or not, public toilets, like hotels and restaurants, get rated by stars. At present in downtown Hangzhou, there are 1,150 public toilets — three at the top with five stars and 100 at the bottom with one star.

Lavatories have been in the news lately because of World Toilet Day on November 19, an annual campaign to promote improved public sanitation.

In honor of the event, the Hangzhou Statistics Bureau surveyed public opinion about the city’s lavatories and found that 99 percent of respondents, including tourists, said they were satisfied with existing facilities.

In order to expand access when nature calls, the Hangzhou City Management Bureau encourages companies, hotels, restaurants, social organizations and government departments to open their restrooms for free to the public.

“To date, 413 facilities have signed up,” said Zhou Chunlong, a bureau official. “Anyone who is refused access should let us know.”

A Shanghai Daily tested the system by going into the restroom at the Foreigner and Overseas Chinese Affairs Department of Zhejiang Province on Santaishan Road. She was not refused entrance.

Each facility that signs up for the restrooms program gets a subsidy of 1,000 yuan (US$144) annually for each toilet stall to help with cleaning costs.

“It is too pricy to build new toilets in the downtown area because of property costs,” Zhou told Shanghai Daily. “Using the washrooms of existing businesses and offices provides the public with much more convenience.”

Each participating locale is required to attach a sign on the front door informing the public that restrooms are available. Government inspectors periodically check hygiene conditions in the lavatories, and those not meeting sanitation standards lose their subsidy.

Hangzhou began providing free public toilets in 2002, when other cities were still charging small entry fees. Starting in 2007, the city began a three-year project to upgrade facilities at 600 public restrooms.

However, existing lavatory facilities around the scenic West Lake tourism area get overloaded on holidays and some weekends, and the city has to set up mobile toilets for women.

Restrooms for women and men require different thinking. Women tend to take longer in restrooms, prefer privacy and often have young children with them.

Last week, the national Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued an order requiring that there be four women’s toilet cubicles for every three male ones, and in crowded areas, the ratio should be two-to-one.

“Hangzhou already achieved that ratio a few years back,” Zhou said. “That’s why the city won the China Habitat Environment Example Prize, by virtue of its public toilet renovation project.”

In 2010, the bureau began rating public toilet facilities according to construction standards and sanitary conditions.

“The one-star toilets are usually located in old residential blocks, where local residents don’t want lavatories renovated because they don’t want more users showing up,” Zhou said. “They think more public use means more odors.”

Newly built residential communities, however, are required to have a public toilet facility for every 1,000 households. All of them must be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there must be one cleaner for every 10 cubicles.

Construction of five-star public toilets has ceased after public complaints that luxury restrooms were wasting money on unnecessary pomposity.

The bureau now stipulates that public toilets must have soap dispensers, toilet paper, paper towels and hand dryers. There is some rethinking going on about paper towels.

“One local media survey found that the paper towel dispensers were sometimes emptied within five minutes,” Zhou told Shanghai Daily. “Some people pinch sheets to take home for cleaning their shoes. We keep telling the public that they need to conserve use of such paper, but it’s a persistent problem.”

So is maintaining public restrooms to high standards. It costs about 10,000 yuan a year to clean and manage each toilet cubicle, Zhou said. “That adds up to more than 160 million yuan on maintenance every year.”

The financial cost includes a smart phone application called Tiexin Chengguan, which directs users to the nearest public laboratory by GPS.

Hangzhou


 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend