The shortage of sanitation facilities is a common problem in Urban and Rural areas alike. You won’t be surprised to see many people urinating in public. Even after various initiatives by the government, there are not enough public toilets for the people. The existing sanitation facilities are not up to the mark.
To deal with the problem of urinals facilities, Ashwani Aggarwal came up with the start-up Basic Shit. It is an initiative that builds low-cost portable urinals. The urinals can be set up by any unskilled labor in public areas where people frequently urinate in the open.
The Founder And Team of Basic Shit
The founder of Basic Shit, Ashwani Aggarwal, is a Fine Arts graduate from Delhi College of Arts and Commerce. The start-up began in 2014 with a team consisting of Ashu, Aditi, Yuva, and Sahaj. Ashwani mentioned, “Shortage of public toilets is an issue that needs attention. Urinating in public leaves behind a terrible smell and has a high potential for spreading many diseases.”
Need For Public Urinals
The idea of Basic Shit started as a college project. But Ashwani realized during his research that effective solutions were required to deal with the problem of sanitation and public urinals. Ashwani interviewed people who peed on the street. He found that the most common reason behind people peeing in the open was the lack of urinals. So, he decided to build cost-effective, easy, and portable urinals in public places.
The Facilities of The PeePee Urinal
The prototype of the toilet, PeePee, is made from 9,000 plastic bottles. The urinal does not require cleaning, water, or sanitation facilities. One unit can be installed in about two hours, and One-unit costs approximately Rs 12,000. The first urinal was set up in front of AIIMS hospital, and it was a huge success. The urinal was made of 20-liter pet bottles.
Each urine carriage in the urinal has a capacity of 200 liters. On average, each carriage collects 150 liters of urine per day. Later, to remove toxins from the urine, the carriages are stabilized and purified with activated carbon. PeePee are basic urinals that have filters through which the urine gets passed and collected. The filter has to be changed every six months, and the purification process does not contaminate the groundwater.
Challenges Faced By Basic Shit
One of the major challenges faced by the team was to get permission from government bodies to build the urinals. Another challenge was to convince people to use these urinals. Most of the people urinating in public had formed a habit and weren’t open to changing it. The major work was to convince and educate them about the benefits of using the public urinals built by Basic Shit.
The Need For Awareness And Education Among People
The start-up identified 30 walls in Delhi where more than 500 people pee each day. The start-up received permission to build basic shit urinals at least in front of 20 such walls. Basic shit is trying to solve one of the most challenging problems in India, the problem of sanitation.
Apart from building public toilets, what the country also requires is to educate people. The general public also needs to act responsibly and use the facilities that the government and the start-up are providing. We wish Basic Shit all the best for all their future endeavors!
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