“Technology is even finding its way into the washroom where it can offer a range of important benefits.”
Technology in the toilet
Essity’s Stuart Hands looks at how technology can be used in the washroom to improve health and safety while also saving time and money.
Technology is increasingly being employed in the cleaning industry to automate tasks and improve efficiency. Robot vacuums, staff-tracking systems and ‘connected’ cleaning trolleys are just a few of the latest high-tech solutions that are revolutionising the sector.
Technology is even finding its way into the washroom where it can offer a range of important benefits. For example, automatic taps and flush systems have become increasingly common over recent years because they reduce the number of washroom surfaces that visitors are obliged to touch.
Sensor-operated dispensers for soap and paper have also become more prevalent for similar reasons of hygiene. The fact that these can be programmed to give out only one dose of soap or sheet of paper at a time has the added benefit of reducing consumption while also keeping down costs, minimising waste and improving sustainability.
Cutting consumption is obviously a desirable outcome in any public facility, but in some parts of the world the technology to achieve this aim has reached new levels.
For example, toilet paper dispensers using facial-recognition technology have been in operation in China for several years. Beijing’s Temple of Heaven Park installed washroom dispensers capable of ‘recognising’ the faces of washroom visitors in 2017. The aim was to ensure that each user only took sufficient toilet paper for their visit, and the technology was later rolled out to other public washrooms across China. However, its use has since been curtailed in some areas due to privacy concerns.
34 | TECHNOLOGY
While reducing hand contact and limiting consumption are both highly beneficial uses of washroom technology, there is another application that is perhaps even more relevant to today’s health and safety-conscious world.
Smart toilets capable of detecting infections and disease have been pioneered in several countries over recent years. For example, toilets that can analyse washroom waste and test it for diabetes and other conditions have been in operation in Japan for some time.
Meanwhile, Israeli startup OutSense has developed a ‘smart’ box that can be clipped on to the side of a toilet bowl where it uses multi-spectral optical sensors to scan the user’s excretions for potential abnormalities. New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology has pioneered a cloud-connected toilet that can track blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and other heart data.
Also in the US, scientists are currently working on ways of monitoring the wastewater in toilets to detect the prevalence of COVID-19 in communities. In a study published in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers explain how a highly technical recovery process can be used to accurately identify changes in community COVID-19 infections. Besides being capable of detecting the virus in wastewater samples, the technology can also track whether infection rates are trending up or down.
The COVID-19 pandemic has of course been instrumental in focusing everyone’s attention on health and safety. It has also, understandably, made us all more wary of using public washrooms.
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