ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

A design graduate has created a bright yellow mobile toilet in protest against the lack of public facilities available for women in The Netherlands.

Yellow Spot is a seatless, waterless polystyrene toilet featuring the slogans "free toilet" and "occupied by women" printed in bold black lettering. Facts about the number of public facilities for women are printed on the inside.

It is the graduation project of designer Elisa Otañez who noticed that while there were many public urinals in Dutch cities there were very few facilities for women.

"Men were peeing in public, in corners, in the streets and they were rewarded with toilets," said Otañez. "Do women have to start doing that as well to get their public toilets?"

"I wanted to make a solution, something that worked and wasn't only as a protest. As a woman you become very used to going into a restaurant or a bar looking for somewhere to go when actually the city should provide a solution."

The Yellow Spot toilet is designed to be hovered over rather than sat upon.
"In the research I carried out in Eindhoven and other Dutch cities I learned that 61 per cent of women don't sit down when using a public toilet," explained Otañez.

Yellow Spot has twice been trialled in public but police asked Otañez to remove it since she had no permit.

"I have had many passionate conversations with women who identified with the issue since it's a problem they have been facing all their lives," said Otañez. "When women need to provide their own toilet solutions in response to the inability of the city to do so, they either are punished for it or have to ask permission."