In order to improve the sanitation level of public toilets, the public toilet working group put forward 10 suggestions in four aspects: toilet design, cleaning operations and technology, monitoring and law enforcement, and publicity work, so that the Ministry of Sustainable Development and the Environment can consider it, including providing toilet renovation subsidies and Toilet deep cleaning subsidy.

The Ministry of Sustainable Development and Environment announced the establishment of a public toilet working group in March last year, led by Ma Yanqing, Senior Deputy Minister of Transportation, and Andrew Khng, Chairman of the Public Health Council, with the goal of reviewing how to improve dirty public toilets. The situation is especially the toilets in coffee shops and hawker centers.

The team members come from government departments, municipal councils, chambers of commerce, non-governmental organizations, academia, facility management agencies, etc. In addition to regular review meetings, the group also visited toilets in different local locations, and went to Japan and China to learn from the teachings in April and November last year, hoping to bring best practices from abroad back to Singapore.

The group submitted the review report to the Sustainability Department on Friday (February 21).

The report pointed out that the cleaning process adopted in individual places is inconsistent, and the skills of different cleaning workers are also different. Some places also face the problem of insufficient staff, and cleaning workers may not find the public toilet dirty in time and postpone the cleaning work.

Further reading

Kang Andrew, Chairman of the Public Health Council: I hope that there will be a clean toilet for the public and drink tea in the next day.

Kang Andrew, Chairman of the Public Health Council: I hope that there will be a clean toilet for the public and drink tea in the next day.

Xinda Survey: If public toilets can be ensured to be clean, nearly half of the respondents are willing to pay for use

Xinda Survey: If public toilets can be ensured to be clean, nearly half of the respondents are willing to pay for use

In addition, the old and outdated toilet design not only causes the environment to be unventilated, but also increases the difficulty of cleaning. If the sanitation of public toilets has little impact on the abortion and business, the owners, managers or operators of the premises will not have the motivation to give priority to the sanitation of public toilets.

my country has actively promoted the importance of maintaining the sanitation level of public toilets for many years, but the team believes that the existing publicity efforts are relatively extensive, and there is no targeting public toilets with relatively poor sanitary conditions, and there is no unified core information on publicity.

The group recommends 22 good toilet design elements

The Public Toilet Working Group has drawn up 10 recommendations for these pain points, including the introduction of a Coffeeshop Toilet Renovation Grant and a Coffeeshop Toilet Deep Cleaning Grant, which is funded by the Ministry of Sustainability to catalyze coffee shop renovations. Work and plan deep cleaning work as part of standard operations.

The team also formulated an ideal toilet design list, recommending 22 good toilet elements. For example, the men's toilet urinal should use a wall-mounted design with at least 800 mm high. All toilets should also be equipped with exhaust fans or fans.

According to the “Project Waterloo” survey released by Singapore Management University last year, the average score of coffee shop toilets is 46.26, basically the same as the level since 2016. The hawker center toilet scored 66.28 points, higher than in 2020 and 2023, but still lower than the 2016 level.

The survey's rating range is from zero (dirtiest) to 100 (cleanest). According to the survey standards, the reasonable cleaning score of public toilets should reach 50 points.