My Indian colleagues tell me that they are available at most porcelain manufacturers and we buy from a company called Nycer in Cuddalore District of Tamil Nadu.

I cannot answer for the success or otherwise relating to their wider use. We use them!

The girls do not use toilet paper, but it is a question I will ask.

There is no search feature on our web site and we do not focus on the urinals, per se.

Hope this helps.

Dear David,

Thanks for your responses. I'll e-mail you separately to get the high resolution of those images and also your permission to have them shared under CC-BY SA licence.

Meanwhile, I have some follow-up questions:
- That Word document that you had attached contained an image by a supplier. Which company is marketing these female urinals in India?
- If the urinals for school girls are a success then why is it not catching on? Or is it catching on? Are they becoming more common also in government schools, outside of your NGO-funded school toilets?
- Do the cubicles or rooms contain a bin where the girls could deposit toilet paper used for drying? Or are they not using toilet paper at all?
- I looked on your website but could not find any information about the urinals. I couldn't find a way to search your website (no search field)?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Thanks for these photos. Do you have also some close-ups?

Attached

I can't really make out where the porcelain trays are exactly. Also it is unclear to me which directions the girls would be facing when they use them: to the wall or away from the wall?

Towards the wall

What is your experience with the different age groups using those urinals without or those urinals with the dividing walls? Do girls really have a preference based on their age?

Yes, younger girls are happy to urinate and chat, while the older ones want a little bit more privacy.

And in which schools and where do you have them and for how long?

We have been using this design for about six years and they are in about fifty of the schools where we have built toilets.

What are your experiences? Do you ever have blocking issues?

I will try and get some case studies through my colleagues in India. We have not experienced any blocking issues.

Perhaps you can also provide a link to your website where this system of girls' urinals at schools is explained.

There isn't a web site that specifically talks about this, just our usual site at www.sanitationfirst.org

Hi David,

Thanks for these photos. Do you have also some close-ups? I can't really make out where the porcelain trays are exactly. Also it is unclear to me which directions the girls would be facing when they use them: to the wall or away from the wall? What is your experience with the different age groups using those urinals without or those urinals with the dividing walls? Do girls really have a preference based on their age? And in which schools and where do you have them and for how long? What are your experiences? Do you ever have blocking issues? Perhaps you can also provide a link to your website where this system of girls' urinals at schools is explained. Thanks.


Hi Chris,

Yes, that Wikipedia article is pretty new. I think a German version of it existed for some time and someone recently translated it from German to English. Unfortunately, there is a "main author" who is a bit over-enthousiastic and makes claims such as "they are becoming widespread in Europe" (without providing any sources). He/she also is not engaging well on the talk page.

About your photo, I can't open the link that you gave me (is my internet connection too slow for it?) but it's probably the one that I mean. Could you either add it yourself or send the jpg file to me for adding? From memory it shows a woman fully dressed and squatting, from the side, just pretending to use a urinal that is lying on the ground in front of her.

The photo of a woman peeing that you currently see in the Wikipedia article, I agee is fine. But there is an image (it's a drawing) in a previous version which the main author has re-instated twice (after others deleted it) which I think shows unnecessary nudity. It shows a woman squatting and peeing from the front, with her undies half off. I think that is not called for. You can see it in this older revision before I removed it:
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Femal...inal&oldid=838831036

You can try to add your own blog as a citation and you might get away with it (depends on how many people are watching this article) but it goes very much against Wikipedia guidelines. You can read about the issue of "identifying reliable sources" here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identify...er-generated_content

It says:

User-generated content[edit source]

Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable. Sites with user-generated content include personal websites, personal blogs, group blogs, internet forums, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Ancestry.com, content farms, most wikis including Wikipedia, and other collaboratively created websites. In particular, a wikilink is not a reliable source.

I don't mind you using your blog (because I know you) but imagine this rule wasn't there: anyone could just write anything on their own blogs and then claim for this to be a "reliable source" and repeat the same information in a Wikipedia article. On controversial topics, and in the age of "fake news", this could cause major problems for Wikipedia, as anyone could write anything, pretending to have reliable sources for it. Wikipedia is not there for people to write opinion pieces either or about their ideas, hopes and plans for the future. It is meant to be an encyclopedia.

One thing that is less controversial is to add an image or photo that is your own work. That you could do and wouldn't need a reliable source to go with it. Hope this explanation helps.

Oh and great that you'll proof read it for English. I am sure there is much to be improved there (as it was translated from German). Please pay special attention on improving readability, i.e. making it easier to understand for laypersons and for people with little formal education. I can recommend two tools for that:
This website tells you the readability score (Flesch score) of any Wikipedia article:
www.readabilityofwikipedia.com/

And this website helps you identify where the difficult sentences and words are in a piece of text (copy the text into the main part of the website):
www.hemingwayapp.com/

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Elisabeth,

Is this Wikipedia article new?

I think the photo of the woman peeing is fine, because it is anonymous, as she is looking the other way. It is very informative in terms of posture.

In your email, you may have referred a photo of a woman using a simple Waterless Urinal in my article here:
www.ecosan.at/ssp/issue-06-toilets/issue-06-toilets
Feel free to use this photo. If it seems too graphic, it could be photoshopped to make it look like a watercolor painting.

It may go against some general guidelines, but I would say that citing a blog in Wikipedia is not a terrible crime.

Now that I know about this article, I will also add a mention to my design for a Women's Urinal in Nature (Wurinatu)
inodoroseco.blogspot.com/2017/05/wurinat...publico-florido.html

I will also proofread this Wikipedia article for English.

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday

Elisabeth, perhaps these may be of some use. We use these porcelain trays in all of our school toilets – on the girls side of course!

Hi Elisabeth!
Thank you for you wiki work!

I am not sure if dilluting urine with flush water still prevents it from being used as fertilizer. The main problem seems to be storage volume increase. But flushing can be done with very little amount of water -- 100 ml is probably enough which is less than average single urination volume.

So far the only waterless urinals (male) in Ukraine I saw are those in public toilets where water flushing is not operating for some reasons . They are quite smelly.

Best,

Bogdan

Hi Bogdan,

Thanks for your feedback. Is urine collection for nutrient reuse practised with any female urinals (do we have a reference?) or is it more of a theoretical advantage? Also, I think the advantages of urinals should be here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinal , and only those relating particularly to female urinals should be on this page. It is also only feasible with waterless urinals, not with the flushed type.

I have added this information to the article on female urinals:
Female urinals have the same advantages compared to toilets urinals for males do. These advantages mainly relate to lower costs, due to less maintenance and space requirement (for users that only need to urinate, not defecate).

Furthermore, I have modified one of the sentences in the Wikipedia articles about urinals which now says:
Waterless urinals allow the collection of undliluted pure urine which can be used as a fertilizer (see also ecological sanitation and reuse of excreta).[5] (using as a reference something that I co-authored some years ago) - is it good like this?

And I have in the meantime removed the image that was overly graphic and wasn't adding much value, showing a woman from the front who was squatting to pee on the ground.

One thing that I would still like to add is information about waterless urinals for girls at schools in India or Malawi or other countries. I have seen that mentioned here and there.* I think David Crosweller once posted about that. Would be good to get information, references or at least a couple of photos for that. Photos are often easier to come by than full references.

Are waterless urinals catching on in Ukraine by the way?

Regards,
Elisabeth

* See e.g. here on the forum: forum.susana.org/172-urinals/11084-detai...in-schools-in-africa

Hello Elisabeth!

Thanks for the link! It is interesting to learn female urinals appeared so long ago. The urine collecting for nutrient reuse is not highlighted though.

Best,
Bogdan

I just spotted that there is a new Wikipedia article on the topic of female urinals, see here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_urinal

It strikes me as very well written and informative. The person who started the article is an editor with a background in Germany, so a fair bit of the content relates to the situation in Germany.

As with any Wikipedia article, the authors always welcome further improvements by others, or suggestions for improvements. Put them here or directly into the article or on the talk page of the article. Thanks.

Chris Canaday: maybe you'd like to add something about your female urinals in Ecuador provided you have a good reference for it (blog posts are normally not allowed but I think you have other publications by now as well). You could also add one of your images.
Speaking of images, I wonder if the first image on the left of the article is perhaps a bit too "graphic" (showing a women peeing from the front). Just wondering if it adds value or is distracting? I am undecided about this.

Regards,
Elisabeth