Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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City of Montreal to install 12 self-cleaning toilets in $1million project
Those who are out and about in the Borough of Ville-Marie in Montreal will, from next year, find it easier to visit a public loo, thanks to a new initiative that will see the city installing 12 self-cleaning public toilets over the next three years at a cost of around $1 million a year.
The budget was passed last week, despite a similar initiative last year being shelved due to a lack of bidders, but the report in CBS News says that a new call for tenders will be launched soon.
Each facility costs on average $300,000.
The report says that several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, have had self-cleaning public toilets for years and that one, in Place Emilie-Gamelin, has been used by the Quartier des Spectacles over the last four months with positive results. Benoit Lemieux, the group's director of operations, has not reported any security issues, with employees only having to clean the facility periodically.
He is quoted as saying: "We just had to keep the toilets clean. We never witnessed anything in the toilets, no conflicts."
In another success story, three individual toilets were installed along Plaza Saint-Hubert - a commercial area in Rosemont, this Summer. Although they resemble chemical toilets, they are fitted with a water tank and are used by about 2,000 people every week.
Mike Parente, general director of the Plaza, told CBS that this was a big improvement over previous arrangements which had: "Put a big stress on stores and restaurants, and on people who wanted to use toilets but couldn't," saying that although some people had used the washrooms in bars, this created problems for families as under eighteens weren't allowed inside.
Sadly for the happy users, these particular toilets are soon to be removed as they are unheated; the first self-cleaning toilet downtown will not be functional until sometime next year.
Image: Place Emilie-Gamelin public washrooms, courtesy of Beno"t Chapdelaine/Radio-Canada
10th September 2015