Amritsar schoolgirl builds India’s first “carbon negative public toilets”.
Ruhani Verma, a schoolgirl from Amritsar, has built what she claims to be India's first carbon-negative public toilet, made entirely of recyclable or reused materials. On Saturday, MP Gurjeet Aujla and airport director V K Seth opened “Toilet 01”, nicknamed Swachh-Alyaa, at the Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport in Amritsar.
“The basic principle of our initiative is sustainability,” said a class 12 student of Jayshree Periwal International School in Jaipur. I have planned to build India’s first structure using eco-friendly bricks. Around 30% of bricks used in toilet construction are single-use plastic, while the remaining 70% are waste and silica dust.”
“Waste generation, particularly the single-use plastic that litters our countryside, is a global phenomenon, and not just in India.” This problem has only gotten worse every year. “This toilet will be able to solve this problem,” Mr Verma said.
She said no natural materials such as earth, silica or water were used in the production of the silica plastic blocks (SPB). They are built entirely from waste. All materials used in the project are recyclable, and no cement mortar was used in the construction process. According to Mr. Verma, an SPB brick is three times stronger than a traditional red clay brick. The entire toilet building was designed in a modular manner.
“If these (four lakh) plastic bags were to be lined up, they would cover a distance of 150 kilometers.” “As this construction does not use water or cement to construct a carbon neutral building, the idea of interlocking the bricks, like Lego blocks, was employed to connect them together,” said Verma, who hopes to study the sustainable design and offer other models of this type to help the environment.
“Amritsar airport did not have toilets in the parking lot, so I thought that would be the best place for this sustainable toilet project.” My school principal, Ayush Periwal, and Shridhar Rao, co-founder of SPB technology, helped me make it happen. “I was also inspired by the airport director, V K Seth-ji, to design these toilets,” she says.