Posts by Phlush
Celebrate First Flush of Portland Loo #5 at 1 pm Jan 31st
Isn’t it weirdly cool that we live in a city that celebrates the first flush of every new Portland Loo? Actually, these repeated inaugurals tell us something. A product has met a need. The city has provided a service citizens think is important. People are using the Loo and talking about it. The co-location of…
Read MoreBuilding Safe Toilet Design into Shared Urban Space
That’s the title of our paper presented at the recent World Toilet Summit in Hainan, China. PHLUSH believes that public toilets should be as much a part of the streetscape as sidewalks and street lamps. But as public restroom advocates all over North America know, it’s an uphill battle. For many public officials the…
Read MoreMeet Susan Mund, PHLUSH Volunteer
As an all-volunteer run organization, PHLUSH relies solely on the help of dedicated volunteers to conduct outreach, plan activities, and manage online communications. So we want to acknowledge the efforts of friend and committed PHLUSH volunteer – Susan Mund. “It is so confusing that in a world concerned with clean, accessible and affordable water,…
Read MoreEmergency Sanitation Updates
Awareness that Portland sits atop the Cascadia Subduction Zone and is at risk of a major earthquake has fueled interest in emergency sanitation. Toilets for Emergencies is what we’re calling our fall campaign that leads up to World Toilet Day, celebrated annually on November 19th. Visitors to the PHLUSH booth at last month’s Water! Festival had…
Read MoreWhere does it all go? Sanitation tours provide answers.
Where does it all go after we flush? How does it all get managed? How come we know so little about how wastewater treatment systems work? These are the questions that led us to organize our 2011-12 series of expert-led tours of sanitation facilities. As citizens, we need some understanding of essential infrastructure to influence…
Read MoreToilets for Emergencies
What are we going to do when the toilets don’t work? Do we have the knowledge and materials we need to build simple, safe, functional toilets for household and multi-household use? Helping Portlanders answer these questions is the goal of Toilets for Emergencies, a fall campaign organized by PHLUSH in partnership with PNCA’s Collaborative Design…
Read MoreWill no-mix toilets work on San Francisco streets?
At PHLUSH we’ve been looking at urine diversion technologies and think no-mix toilets are going to be really important in the future. And we’re keen to get the word out as we consider earthquake preparedness and what to do for emergency household toilets when we can’t flush. So a proposal, picked up by the New York Times,…
Read MoreSanitation tour series begins Sept 28th with Living Machine visit
To provide opportunities for citizens to get the knowledge necessary to influence sound budget and public policy decisions regarding urban sanitation and sewers, PHLUSH has organized a series of expert-led visits. On Wednesday, September 28th we have arranged a lunch hour visit to the Living Machine® at the Port of Portland in their new LEED Platinum headquarters designed by…
Read MoreLocal Sanitation Entrepreneur Invents Rainwater Restroom
Kyle Earlywine co-owner of Green Flush Technologies writes: They say necessity is the mother of invention but even common needs such as restroom access often lack innovation. For instance, flush toilets have been the norm in households and public restrooms for longer than most Americans can remember. Yet in remote or wilderness areas without water…
Read MoreSwiss Economist Backs Us Up: Portlanders Pay too Much for Sanitation
Writes Molly Danielsson, who, along with Mathew Lippincott, has received a stipend at Cewas in Switzerland. Part of a group of entrepreneurs launching sanitation businesses, they are meeting and interviewing experts in the field. Watch this space for reports of their discoveries. Mat and I had a chance to hear Isabel Guenther speak on May…
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