Restroom 2.0
No one has ever entered a public restroom expecting a clean and hygienic experience. The mere mention of "public restroom" conjures up visions of roadside bathrooms plagued with rusted pipes, flickering lights, questionable odors, and keys attached to obscenely large pieces of wood to gain entry. Even bathrooms with "inspection dates" attached to clipboards hung next to the doors are often at the very least in need of improvement and at most in need of a total demolition and to have all former memories of said restroom wiped from patrons' minds for eternity.
Almost 60 percent of Americans say they use a public restroom one to five times a week. In fact, 21 percent of Americans use public restrooms from six to 15+ times a week*. And with those figures come other - more damning statistics:
70 percent say they have had an unpleasant experience due to the conditions in a public restroom – up from 51 percent in 2012.
Almost 80 percent say they frequently or occasionally see others leave a public restroom without washing their hands.
Most Americans say that a messy restroom signifies poor management and shows the business doesn’t care about its appearance or its customers.
To put it more bluntly: it's time to clean up public restrooms. In a post-COVID world, getting it right is more important than ever. To do that, we need to embrace emerging technology, and there are some key players making amazing strides that ensure a pleasant experience for all who head into a public loo.
Since Arcspring invested in Vectair Systems back in late November of 2020, I've been thinking a lot about restrooms. As a leader in aircare & hygiene sectors throughout the world, Vectair has created advances you've probably already seen (or, more directly, pleasantly smelled) in public restrooms. Their products have incredible potential to not only create more sanitary conditions, but to act as a hub for the smart restroom of tomorrow.
I imagine a central device filled with sensors that detect items such as humidity levels, foul odors, usage numbers, and cleaning frequency. Using this data, the bathroom of tomorrow can ensure that supplies are reordered and restocked efficiently, maintenance and cleaning is performed quickly, and energy usage for lights and devices is smartly reduced during off-hours.
I worked at a coffee bar in high school, and cleaning the establishment's restroom was assigned to new hires or as punishment to surly employees. It was a horrid place where even the strongest among us were brought to tears by the sights we witnessed. The idea of removing the human-side of bathroom janitorial work can not only be cost-effective, but it might save a 16 year-old from emotional scarring at such a young age. Luckily, Somatic has created a robot to perform such meanial tasks with incredibly efficiency. No longer will people need to scrub while stifling gags. Instead, the cold and emotionally-distant personality of a robot will find the job as easy as painless as, well, literally everything else in its world. Plus, restrooms are excellent places for these types of robots to train.
Somatic's CEO, Michael Levy, finds public restrooms to be a great trial area for robot-assisted cleaning, "The reason bathrooms are such a good application, because everything is bolted down to the floor. Things move in a predictable way. All commercial bathrooms built after 1994 are ADA compliant. What’s good for robotics is that it lays a specific design."
Simiarly, Shine has created a stationary smart device that cleans and maintains household toilets, and a commercial application of this technology seems inevitable. Likewise, Kohler's Veil line of products has similar functionality though with it built into the toilet itself.
Even before COVID, public restrooms were notorious havens for germs. Who hasn't flushed a toilet with their foot, used a paper towel to open a public restroom doorhandle, or wondered how many viruses the creaky and rusted hand dryer is spreading around the room? But what if germs in bathrooms became a thing of the past? What if there were a way to kill 99% of them without requiring anything short of full-on nuclear war?
The solution is UV light. Boeing has been doing it for years in their airplane bathrooms, and larger scale applications are beginning to show up in heavily-trafficked areas. UV lights have been installed in restroom vents, while other buildings have taken to creating intermittent full-room UV light exposure to eradicate viruses and bacteria on everything the light touches. Turn it on, and 30 minutes later you've successfully disrupted virus and bacteria at a nuclear level. (Note:UV light, especially UV-C light, can cause health risks such as burns and blindness, so bathing these rooms in the light would only be done without humans present.)
Cleaner and well-maintained bathrooms are coming soon, and the hopes of many lowly 16 year-old part time employees with weak stomachs rest on these inventions. Until then, wash your hands, clean up after yourselves, and wear a mask. Please.
*Based on 2019 figures
(Statistics provided by the 2016 Healthy Hand Washing Survey)
