Difference between revisions of "Team:ICT-Mumbai/HP/Gold Integrated"

The city of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) is the most populous city in India. The stench emanating in public toilets in Mumbai spurred us to find a solution to this scourge that afflicts the denizens of our teeming city. To understand the magnitude of this problem and design an appropriate intervention to tackle it, we

• carried out a survey to identify public toilets in Mumbai that are unbearably smelly
• approached a non-governmental organization, Sulabh International (http://www.sulabhinternational.org/), which builds and manages 640 public toilets all over India, to find out how they keep their facilities clean
• interacted with students attending a municipal school catering to those from deprived backgrounds to find out the status of hygienic practices prevalent in their localities

The information we obtained was instrumental in helping us decide and design strategies to detect and measure ammonia in air, and also helped us identify potential users of the solution that we propose to come up with.

Have a look at what we have done by clicking on the buttons below:

Current solutions

Before embarking on our pursuit, we first analysed the current solutions that are available for deodorization of toilets and their short-comings. A summary of our findings is given below:

1) Perfume or Naptha balls: This is the most commonly used method for tackling toilet odour. Perfumes used may vary in price from affordable deodorants to high-end fragrances while naptha balls are usually cheap. They just offer a band- aid solution and tend to fade away with time.

2) Water-less toilets: Water-less toilets though proven to provide odorless sanitation and capable of saving water, come at a steep price. Majority of today's washrooms cannot be upgraded into a water-less facility without making drastic changes, thus limiting its usage.

3) Bioblocks: Bioblocks provide a bio-response that is, they release benevolent bacteria every time they come in contact with urine. The bacteria prevent odour formation in addition to release of a fine fragrance. Their only limitation is the fact that they need to be replaced every few days, making them inconvenient.

Public and educational outreach

Science is all about curiosity and kids are known to be very curious! Hence, sparking scientific curiosity amongst kids has been over main focus. We are thankful to Sparsha Charitable Trust for giving us the opportunity to interact with kids from K. D. Vidyalaya school. In our interactive sessions, we tried our best to convey the sense of biotechnology beginning right from explaining what a cell is, to giving day-to- day examples such as bread, ethanol, and curd production by microbes. This went a long way in clearing a common misconception amongst them that all microorganisms are bad. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the session and we were satisfied that we could introduce them to biotechnology and convert them into science enthusiasts.


Expert advice

In order to make our device suitable for practical use in public washrooms, we consulted Sulabh International, an NGO behind the ‘Sulabh Sanitation Movement’ who have built 1.5 million household toilets & 54 million government toilets around India. According to Mr. Nirmal Singh, President of Sulabh International, Mumbai the device under design by us could one day be used in public washrooms provided it is economically feasible. From above interaction, we got an idea of how public toilets are being maintained and this motivated us to make this process easier and economical.

Survey



Mumbai's suburban railway network is the most used mode of transport for residents of this city. On an average, this system caters to more than 7.5 million commuters daily (travelling from and to more than 106 railway stations), making it one of the busiest and most crowded rail systems in the world. Unfortunately, the washroom facilities on the railway stations leave much to be desired. The upkeep and maintenance of toilets on these railway stations is the responsibility of Indian Railways, and in some cases, private contractors. Despite numerous efforts by the authorities, such as periodic cleaning, using generous amounts of water for flushing, and better awareness, commuters prefer to not use these toilets because of many reasons, the most common complaint being the stench emanating from them.

We at Team ICT-Mumbai, as a part of our integrated human practices activity, decided to carry out a survey that will cover this large network of commuters, covering an area of ~ 430 km. The idea behind carrying out the survey was to 1) Identify areas (public toilets that are not used primarily due to the stench!) that require immediate attention. 2) Identify the authorities that are responsible for maintainence of these toilets, so that they can be approached when whatever. 3) Identify other reasons (besides stench) why these toilets are not used often and are most often the least and last preferred option. 4) Spread awareness about how synthetic biology can help in getting rid of this issue.

Q: Status of these toilets?



Q: Do you use them?



Q: Does public toilet smell deter you from using them?



Q: If we could come up with a solution that eliminates this odor, would you use these toilets?