with men. Some are embarrassed to be seen applying their make-up or brushing their teeth in front of male colleagues, for example.
At the same time, men using unisex facilities complain that queues become longer once urinals have been eliminated, and that the facilities in general are more crowded when women congregate around the mirrors.
One aspect that seems to have been omitted from the whole debate is the fact that men and women are different. And they have differing requirements of their washroom.
A survey carried out at the Millennium Dome in 2000 revealed that 6% of women visit the washroom merely to accompany a friend or to use the mirror. Women are more likely to wear make-up than men and the washroom is an ideal place to check their make- up or reapply it.
It is therefore no surprise that women generally spend twice as much time in the bathroom as men – a fact that emerged in a study carried out by the University of Arizona’s professor of microbiology Chuck Gerba.
According to other studies, women use an average of seven pieces of toilet tissue per visit compared with only two used by men. Women are also more likely to wash their hands after using the loo than men: a study carried out among 100,000 people in 2015 revealed that 62% of men and 40% of women admit to not washing their hands after using the loo.
So, the ideal unisex toilet should be sufficiently spacious to allow men to pass through swiftly in order to use the cubicles while also providing room for women to use the mirrors.
It should be a light, open space where everyone feels comfortable regardless of gender. And sufficient toilet paper should be provided for both sexes along with good hand hygiene facilities to encourage everyone to wash their hands after using the loo.
Ideally there should be shelves and mirrors located away from the sinks so that people in a hurry to wash and dry their hands can do so without being held up by someone at the mirror. And maintenance checks should be kept to
www.tomorrowscleaning.com
“Several schools and universities in the US and Canada now
offer transgender washrooms.”
a minimum since anyone who feels shy of using shared facilities might become even more anxious in the presence of cleaners of the opposite sex.
Long-lasting soap and paper systems that are easy to top up work well in busy unisex washrooms. Where there are no urinals, queues for the cubicles will quickly form if the toilet paper supply has been allowed to run out in any one of them. Similarly, queues may be a problem where air dryers are supplied since drying hands takes longer with a machine than it does with a paper towel. A continuous supply of hand towels will speed up the process and allow washroom users to take a towel and then quickly leave.
The high-capacity Tork Matic dispenser is a good solution here since the unit holds sufficient paper for more than 400 hand dries. This means the risk of paper running out during busy periods is reduced.
Tork Foam Soap is another long- lasting solution since each cartridge contains around 2,500 shots of soap compared with 1,000 for a typical liquid soap cartridge. And a long- lasting toilet paper system should be supplied to cater for the differing requirements of men and women. The Tork SmartOne for example has been designed to give out one sheet of toilet tissue at a time, potentially reducing consumption by up to 40%.
Who knows whether unisex washrooms are here to stay or whether they will disappear for reasons of security, safety or embarrassment. But while they are part of our lives we need to make the best of them. And this means ensuring that they are clean and hygienic; they can be used quickly and easily and that they are equipped with systems that encourage good hand hygiene. These are all key qualities of any away-from-home washroom, whatever your gender.
www.tork.co.uk WASHROOM HYGIENE | 41
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