The Ministry of Environment yesterday held a seminar in Taipei for experts from Taiwan and Japan to exchange their experiences on the designs and development of public toilets.
Japan Toilet Association chairman Kohei Yamamoto said that he was impressed with the eco-toilet set up at Daan Forest Park, adding that Japan still faces issues regarding public restrooms despite the progress it made over the past decades.
For example, an all-gender toilet was set up in Kabukicho in Tokyo’s Shinjuku District several years ago, but it caused a public backlash and was rebuilt into traditional men’s and women’s toilets, he said.
Photo: CNA
Japan Toilet Association director Mikiko Takahashi talked about her experience of inspecting public toilets in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture following the Noto Peninsula earthquake last year, saying that some toilets were damaged by the tsunami and remained unusable.
Japan has a policy that temporary toilets must be transported to earthquake-stricken areas if the seismic intensity reaches level seven or higher, but transportation requires three days in most cases, she said.
The delivery of temporary toilets was further delayed after the Noto Peninsula earthquake as many access roads were destroyed, Takahashi said.
Therefore, the Japanese government has developed a portable plastic toilet that can be placed on a toilet bowl, with excrement being wrapped up in emergencies or disasters where water is absent, she said.
A survey conducted in 2023 showed that more than 75 percent of Japanese prepared drinking water for disaster use, but only about 20 percent had emergency toilets prepared, Takahashi said, calling on the public to prepare one of these toilets in case of emergencies and to practice using it.
Environmental Protection Administration official Lin Yi-fang (林憶芳) said the ministry has listed more than 45,000 public restrooms for management nationwide, as well as funded the construction of 951 all-gender restrooms and 1,345 public restrooms at tourist sites.
The government would continue to promote all-gender restrooms, as such a design responds to the needs of gender-diverse people and helps reduce the waiting time for women at restrooms, she said, citing WHO data as showing that women wait twice as long as men to use a public toilet.
Friends of Daan Forest Park Foundation managing director Tsai Chien-sheng (蔡建生) said that a sitting toilet is the key to a healthy toilet culture and every user is responsible for keeping public restrooms clean.
Research showed that a squat toilet has 164 times more germs than a sitting toilet, as urine or excrement can easily splash out of the bowl, he said.
The proportion of public sitting toilets in Japan reached more than 99 percent in 2015 from 17 percent in 1963, while public squat toilets almost ceased to be manufactured over the same period, Tsai said.
Deputy Minister of Environment Shen Chih-hsiu (沈志修) said that public restrooms can represent a nation’s cultural depth and Japan has set an excellent example in this regard that Taiwan should try to learn from, especially with Taiwan becoming an aging society.
It is important for elderly people to have safe, convenient sitting toilets available for use while they are in public spaces, he said.
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