Plastic to Portable Toilet

Recycling of plastics is a big problem and it's growing day-by-day. Using one problem as the solution to another problem is quite pioneering and praiseworthy. 28-year-old Ashwani Aggarwal has killed two birds with one stone. Confused? Open urination and defecation are not uncommon in our country, although India has been declared open defecation free by the government we still find men urinating out in the open. Ashwani, a fine arts graduate from Delhi IIT thought of a brilliant way of converting plastic bottles into portable urinals. His friends Himanshu Saini and Karan Singh also joined him in this noble venture, which they call 'Basic Shit'. Ashwani started it back in 2014 as a college project. Initially he took part in awareness drives where he met people and spoke to them discussed the perils of open urination.

bathroom

The prototype portable urinal 'Peepee' was made from single-use plastic, which was set up outside the AIIMS Hospital. He used the plastics thrown away in the garbage and it took about 20-liters of pet bottles to design the urinal. Now, Ashwani and his friends have now recycled around 9,000 plastic bottles to build these eco-friendly toilets. Not only that these urinals have purification systems that filter the collected urine using activated carbon, as a result the urine does not contaminate the groundwater. Hence no need for water, Ashwani says that these urinals have filter through which urine is passed and collected and the filters need to be changed every six months. After the construction came the challenge of installation, Ashwani had to convince and get permission from government bodies for installing these urinals. Soon he identified that people urinate in places or properties not owned anyone and Ashwani started installing portable urinals in such places. They have also made it a point of installing these Basic Shit Urinals in police stations as although many police stations have toilets but they do not have urinals plus being installed in the police stations ensures that these toilets will stay secure.

Till now the team has identified 30 walls across the city and got permission to cover almost twenty of them. Ashwani plans and hopes of covering more cities across the country. The cost of one unit is approximately Rs 12000 and takes about only two hours to install. 

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