Fine arts grad makes public urinals from plastic bottles
One urinal takes around five to six hours to make and about one hour to assemble, says inventor Ashwani Aggarwal. The first one already stands behind the police station in Dhaula Kuan
NEWDELHI: A 28-year-old graduate of fine arts has taken it upon himself to ease two of Delhi’s biggest problems — open urination and single-use plastic, with one move.
Ashwani Aggarwal is building urinals that are made 100% from plastic bottles. What makes the initiative all the more interesting is that these urinals are waterless.
The first such urinal in the city already stands behind the police station in Dhaula Kuan.
“I have been experimenting with different models of toilets. Before I came up with these urinals, I had already tried models using different material. But everything else was either not durable enough, used to take a lot of effort to maintain or used to get stolen from public places,” Aggarwal said.
It was one day when Aggarwal was experimenting to get the “perfect core material” for his urinals that he stumbled upon the idea. He said he grinded a piece from a plastic bottle in a kitchen mixer and flattened it out with iron. The large scale result of his finding is these ecofriendly urinals.
“I don’t have a very large team. A recycling unit segregates and supplies plastic bottles, which are crushed into coarse plastic granules. A few layers of these sheets are then compressed and used to create the walls, floor and the entire structure of the urinal,” he said.
He added, “One urinal takes around five to six hours to make and about one hour to assemble.”
Explaining how the urinal functions, Aggarwal said the urine passes through two layers of filter, one with activated charcoal and a second, which comprises saw dust and gravels to purify the waste. This filter keeps the area odourless. Each filter requires to be changed every six months.
Nearly 9,000 plastic bottles are used to create one urinal, and each one saves an average of 500 litres of water everyday. At present, since these are being done on a small scale, one urinal costs about ₹12, 000 to make. This cost is being borne entirely by Aggarwal.
“I have not patented the model. In fact, I want that more people use it and make it themselves. All I want is to solve the problem of open urination in the city,” he said.
Despite the environmentfriendly aspect to his urinal design, his journey so far has been far from easy. Before coming up with the current model, Aggarwal had tried a different type of urinal model, made from 20-litre bottle canisters. One such was installed opposite the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for family members of patients that are admitted at AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital, who often do not have access to toilets inside the hospital buildings.
“The urinals were extensively used, but I faced a lot of problems after a point. Market associations, general public and municipal agencies are often not supportive of such projects. Even while I am trying to do something for the city, I often find myself caught in the long and exhaustive procedures of permission-taking,” he said.
Aggarwal hopes that the recent appeal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to end the use of single-use plastic will help his initiative.
“Just a few toilets can orevent tonnes of plastic from ending up in the landfills. I am planning to construct more toilets around the Ring Road, instead of randomly choosing locations,” Aggarwal added. as an Indian Police Service officer and lured many women by saying that he can arrange government jobs for them. Thereafter, he started sending obscene content to the phones on Whatsapp,” said a police officer.
Investigation showed that Shankar had moved to Delhi sixseven months back and was working as a security guard. He procured a SIM card on a fake ID, through which he would make the calls. Shankar told the police that he used to run a mobile phone shop at Kushinagar, UP, and had collected contact details of many female customers during that period.
“Efforts are continuing to contact other victims to record their statements and to collect evidences available with them to corroborate the present case,” said Thakur.