A sustainable spin to public sanitation

It isn’t uncommon to find a man urinating in a public space in urban India, even in a city like Delhi.
A portable toilet made out of recycled plastic designed and installed by ‘BasicShit’
A portable toilet made out of recycled plastic designed and installed by ‘BasicShit’

It isn’t uncommon to find a man urinating in a public space in urban India, even in a city like Delhi. It is important to understand that inaccessible, clean, and defunct public toilets are among the few reasons why bringing about a behavioural change followed by the elimination of open urination has become difficult to achieve. Hoping to create awareness about this pressing issue, Sarojini Nagar-resident Ashwani Aggarwal (31) launched ‘BasicShit’—an initiative that provides eco-friendly and functional solutions to public urination—in 2014.  

For Aggarwal, this venture started as a college thesis at the College of Arts, New Delhi. “While researching on my thesis, I realised what a huge issue public sanitation was in Delhi. This issue needed a lot of innovation and design. There were so many things to keep in mind when working on sanitation. It is not just a small urinal that is important; there are a number of minute elements that together make up proper sanitation. This is what got me interested in sanitation,” shares Aggarwal.

His first public urinal design, which he installed near the Sarojini Nagar market in 2014, was made out of recycled water bottles. The focus was not just on creating a usable public structure but to also ensuring that waste management by converting waste, both biodegradable and non-biodegradable, into usable products. Their current environmentally-friendly public urinal—they call it PeePee—is constructed using plastic waste, making these toilets both eco-friendly and at practically zero cost to make.

Delhiites at ‘BasicShit’ urinals
Delhiites at ‘BasicShit’ urinals

Creating conscious change
Through a collective of architects, artists, filmmakers, who are part of their design team, ‘BasicShit’ has currently installed around 200 urinals around Delhi-NCR, and two portable toilets near Ring Road. The waste recycling collective collaborates with auto drivers across the Capital and teaches them how to install and maintain these urinals. Aggarwal mentions that a major strategy to improve sanitation is to create a sense of belonging of the spaces within the community.

“We came to realise that people urinate mostly in places where the land belongs to nobody. So, along with designing and installing, we try to beautify the area so people think twice before urinating outside,” Aggarwal says. ‘BasicShit’ thus partners with a number of NGOs that help beautify public places by creating street art and planting new plants. Talking about the utility of their product, the PeePee’s design, Aggarwal explains, “You mostly see urinals made out of ceramic material. We do not take the traditional route. Our entire urinal is one complete product. This helps prevent leakage.”

Giving to the community
In an attempt to collect data on public sanitation in Delhi, ‘BasicShit’ offers internships to students. “We created an app that would let the users rate the public toilet they visited. This helped us in understand how we need to improve,” he shares. They raise money for their designs and materials through crowdfunding and by providing portable urinals for the audiences at music festivals such as the Ziro Festival of Music in Arunachal Pradesh. 

The ‘BasicShit’ team also organised campaigns during the Indian farmers’ protest of 2021.  to teach the farmers how to make portable toilets from leftover oil containers. “Earlier, people didn’t have a solution to this problem. Now, I don’t have to search for a location. People call me up themselves for the urinals. I think is a great step towards public sanitation,” concludes Aggarwal. 

Related Stories

No stories found.
Indulgexpress
www.indulgexpress.com