Legalize Sustainable Sanitation

July 27, 2015
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Legalize Sustainable Sanitation

“Legalize Sustainable Sanitation” is Molly Danielsson Winter’s prepared testimony on behalf of H.375, the bill that is currently under review in Vermont to expand and incentivize the use of ecological toilets and greywater systems. Molly is Director of Recode, a Portland-based nonprofit whose mission is to ensure access and accelerate adoption of sustainable building...

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Facing Facts: A Critique of Legacy Wastewater Treatment Systems

May 28, 2015
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Facing Facts: A Critique of Legacy Wastewater Treatment Systems

Hearings in the Vermont House of Representatives earlier this month give a penetrating and carefully documented look into the issues we are researching at PHLUSH. House Bill 375, sponsored by Representative Teo Zagar seeks to expand and incentivize the use of ecological toilets and greywater systems. Now that much of the extensive testimony organized...

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Enacting Awareness: Water, Waste, and Public Space

May 26, 2015
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Enacting Awareness: Water, Waste, and Public Space

With last Friday’s whimsical 5K walk, activists at the University of California at Santa Cruz focused attention on often-evaded issues. “Slugs to Sludge” was created as a playful way to raise awareness of sewage infrastructure and the water it requires, and to advocate for action on ecological sanitation at UCSC and beyond. With the...

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Staying human through hygiene while houseless

April 7, 2015
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Staying human through hygiene while houseless

Living houseless in an urban environment requires personal savvy and logistic skill. Days are often an endless series of searches, lines, and waits: finding the next meal, a safe place to sleep, a public restroom. Here at PHLUSH, we see toilet availability as a human right and advocate for building urban public restrooms that...

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Poo to Peaches – Educating the Next Generation of Composting Toilet Users

March 2, 2015
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Poo to Peaches – Educating the Next Generation of Composting Toilet Users

Guest post by Stephen Thomas of Watershed Management Group. Every day, the average person flushes 10 gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet. This constitutes a waste of two precious resources: scarce water supplies and human manure, which could instead be composted to form a fertile soil amendment. While there are various  commercial...

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World Toilet Day 2014 Recap

December 8, 2014
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World Toilet Day 2014 Recap

World Toilet Day on November 19 brought such a deluge of articles, new reports, infographics, and videos that it’s taken us until now to work through them.  International media outlets, when compared to those in the United States, often better convey dynamic technicalities of sanitation systems on multiple scales. But after a review of...

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Celebrating a Gender-Inclusive World Toilet Day

November 18, 2014
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Celebrating a Gender-Inclusive World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day is now officially celebrated by the United Nations every year on November 19th to bring attention to the 2.5 billion of our fellow humans who lack access to clean safe toilets.  In the United States, clean, comfortable restrooms are a common expectation whether we are at work, home, a coffee shop, or even at...

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Back to School: Free Course in Sanitation Systems & Technologies

October 5, 2014
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Providing toilets to 2.4 billion of our fellow humans without them and building sanitary infrastructure that controls the spread of Ebola and other contagious killers calls for widespread training. Starting October 13, 2014, Eawag, (the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), in collaboration with EPFL (the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), is offering a free online course Design...

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Let’s Legalize Composting & UD toilets in US

August 3, 2014
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Let’s Legalize Composting & UD toilets in US

Our friends at Recode have drafted model code for composting toilets with urine diversion (UD) and IAMPO is preparing to vote on it. This Portland-based group of scientists and policy advocates have made spectacular progress. Now Recode is calling on us to help make history. Please consider a tax-deductible donation to enable Recode’s Director to travel to California to address IAMPO officials. Details are...

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GottaGo! campaigning for public toilets in Ottawa

May 15, 2014
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GottaGo! campaigning for public toilets in Ottawa

This guest blog post is from Joan Kuyek of GottaGo!. The GottaGo! campaign in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, is advocating for a network of open clean, accessible public toilets and water fountains in key places in the region. Currently, the only public toilets in Ottawa are in recreation centres, libraries and large parks. When the...

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Our Mission Through education and advocacy, PHLUSH helps local governments and citizen groups to provide equitable public restroom availability and to prepare for a pipe-breaking seismic event with appropriate ecological toilet systems.

Our Vision Toilet availability is a human right and well-designed sanitation systems restore health to our cities, our waters and our soils.

Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human (PHLUSH) was founded in Portland, Oregon and today collaborates with groups across North America.

PHLUSH is a member of the World Toilet Organization and a partner in the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance.

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