If people are looking to handle business, get a drink and lounge around all from the public bathroom, China is developing the perfect restroom for you. Innovation is the word that rules Beijing right now, after the federal government has expressed their intention to bring all of Beijing to the highest point of the Internet Plus era; even their toilets.
China Celebrates World Toilet Day
In time for Thursday’s World Toilet Day, Beijing presented a prototype public toilet that bears little similarity – in sight or odor – to the much hated dirty, unhygienic ones we’re used to in some public establishments. China’s new public toilets feature an ATM, a lounge with vending machines, a machine for paying utility bills and even an electric-car charging station. These toilets have waste baskets for paper as well as plastic bottles. Relaxing, Enya-style tracks are played inside for added ‘feel’. Every toilet is furnished with a flat-screen television, and they use dirty sink water for flushing. The bowls separate urine from feces for greener processing.
People will have the option of using the Chinese traditional squat toilet, Western-style sit-down toilets or even a household toilet with a changing table and a mini-toilet for toddlers being potty trained.
This is A Great Innovation, But it Retains Some Basics
In order to save paper, these prototype restrooms will have users draw out the amount of toilet paper that they would use before going in. One of these restrooms is already open in Fangshan, in southern Beijing. The toilet, called the ‘Fifth Space’, is visited by over 2,000 people per day, is going to be one of 57,000 new public toilets transformed within the next three years.
Though not all of them will be as high-tech as the Fifth Space. Nonetheless, China hopes to combine the Internet Plus with modern toilets, funding them with investment from e-commerce service providers, who could use them as centers to lure people to get products online. The higher degree of staffing needed to care for the hi-tech toilets would also create jobs, an employee said.
