The portable restroom industry plays a significant role in leaving the world safer for the next generation. In every industry, including portable toilet rentals, each business leader shares a local, and, by extension, regional, national, and global responsibility. That is to choose actions that make his or her company a part of the solution to environmental sustainability. Renting portable restrooms can go a long way toward improving environmental conditions by reducing human and wildlife exposure to harmful bacteria and viruses, protecting vegetation from toxic waste, and much more.
Evolution of Portable Toilet Facilities
The original intensely odorous old wood and metal portable toilet units of the 1940s evolved into today’s high-tech polyurethane models for the ultimate in efficient cleaning and maintenance. Waste matter in quality modern portable toilets is fully covered, and pathogen-killing liquid cleaning and disinfecting solutions are used. The use of formaldehyde, a carcinogenic and environmentally damaging agent, has long been replaced by environmentally safe cleaning and disinfecting solutions.
Positive Environmental Effects of Modern Portable Toilets
Today’s portable toilet industry offers an environmentally beneficial approach to the collection and disposal of human waste by providing state-of-the-art receptacles and employing eco-supportive microbes and enzymes to overcome health-threatening and odor-generating bacteria.
7 Environmental Benefits of Modern Portable Toilets
The world-wide portable toilet rental market is currently valued at US $17.94 billion (2023), according to Fortune Business Insights, an analytics and consulting firm serving multiple global brands. The industry is expected to grow at a 7.4% CAGR to US $29.66 billion by 2030. So, that staggering expansion rate represents a vast amount of opportunity to contribute even more broadly these 7 important environmental benefits, among others, for which portable toilet use is becoming well recognized:
1. Portable toilets reduce water usage.
The EPA reports that, on average, people in the U.S. use more water flushing waste down the toilet every day than the amount of water they use for any other purpose. Portable toilets use significantly less water than standard residential toilets use. Using portable toilets saves an estimated average of 120 million gallons or more of water daily just in the models with waterless disposal designs.
2. Portable toilets help reduce the spread of disease from humans to wildlife.
Naturally, human waste can be toxic to plants and wildlife when it contaminates an area, especially in large quantities due to heavy visitor traffic. The contaminants are carried on shoes, human feet, animal paws, insect feet, etc. So, most parks and campgrounds provide portable toilets to contain potential contaminants and maintain relative cleanliness of public areas.
3. Portable toilets prevent contamination of vegetation by toxic waste.
When groups of people congregate in natural areas that do not have convenient toilet facilities, predictably, people urinate on grass, in brush, at the bases of trees, etc. Accumulated urine (and feces) can become toxic to plants, inundating them with large quantities of salts and an array of harmful elements. Portable toilets help prevent damage to plants and hazards to wildlife.
4. Portable toilets protect water sources.
Human feces frequently contains dangerous pathogens that can contaminate water sources and cause disease if they are not disposed of properly. Modern outdoor portable toilet facilities with flushing functionality, often along with sinks with wastewater reservoirs for handwashing, are placed in outdoor spaces to prevent risk from unmanaged human waste.
5. Portable toilets help prevent insect infestations.
Just one uncontained deposit of human waste attracts multitudes of flies and other flying and crawling insects to an area. Additionally, internal parasites from a person’s body can contaminate soil and be transmitted to other people and to pet animals and wildlife, with some even penetrating the feet and hands as a mode of transmission.
6. Portable toilet facilities can minimize contamination of hands and clothes.
After using portable toilets, bacteria may be spread by human hands and can threaten health in shared outdoor environments, especially during food handling. Keeping waste contained and controlled and providing a hand-washing facility helps prevent the spread of disease.
7. Portable toilet disinfecting products protect public health.
Well-maintained portable toilets help prevent the spread of disease from one user to another at public locations and can be instrumental in reducing sick days at work sites. Modern portable toilet cleaning products do not contain formaldehyde or alcohol as they once did to kill parasites in human waste and mitigate odor in portable toilet units, so there’s no need to trade one form of unhealthy exposure for another by utilizing portable toilets.
Portable Toilets and the Environment
Portable toilets have advanced so much that old waste-handling issues of the past and even former odor issues are minimal with use of today’s modernized versions. It’s fair to say that, overall, the environment benefits from the use of portable toilets have made the industry essential for environmental protection. The more portable toilets and handwashing stations that are put into use in any locations where people are congregating and permanent facilities are not available, the greater the industry’s benefit to people, pets, wildlife, and the greater natural environment in which we all must live.