This year’s World Toilet/Portable Sanitation Day theme is Groundwater and Sanitation, which places portable sanitarians front and center. This year take time to reflect on what brought you to the industry, what keeps you here, and what you’d like the future of portable sanitation to be. To mark the occasion, we’ve gathered five simple facts to remind you what makes the work you do so important.
1. Portable restrooms annually save 45 million gallons of freshwater. In a world where open defecation is still a problem for roughly 826 million people globally, portable toilets represent an already-working solution to expand upon. Imagine how many millions more gallons of freshwater could be saved if portable restroom access were increased in vulnerable populations.
2. Emergency site services in disaster response. When hurricanes and other natural disasters knock out water and wastewater treatment plants, PROs are among the first to load up and roll out, providing sanitation that keeps further overflow out of an overwhelmed system and the general public safe.
3. Hand-wash stations save 6.8 million gallons of freshwater weekly. Hand-wash stations not only save on freshwater, they also ensure a healthy food supply chain. If your neighborhood farmer employs a workforce at harvest time, they probably (or at least should) employ you too. Providing hand-wash stations and sani-stands service keeps us all safe from Salmonella and E. coli.
4. Dating back to World War II, portable sanitation is an originator of green industries. PROs have been green since before green was even a thing! While the polyethylene toilet wouldn’t be patented until 1960, PROs existed beforehand and were long searching for a greener alternative to handling waste.
5. With 3.4 million portable restrooms in circulation globally, portable sanitation plays no small role in responding to the ongoing water crisis. UN Water estimates that 3.6 billion people live without adequate toilet facilities or sanitation systems. Portable toilets have a logistical role to play in alleviating this invisible water crisis.
No matter the reasons you had for becoming a PRO, the services you provide are invaluable both on the micro and macro levels. Don’t forget to share this with your colleagues and customers; the importance of portable sanitation maybe evident to you but it isn’t to everyone.
