Toilet situation is a disgrace

[The Nal]

Just give us more urinals (one beside every composter), clean the composters a bit and put some lights in. Sorted.

[rug568]

3 hours ago, jplewes said:

Did they get the same criticism at Green Man? I'd agree with the fix above anyway but never experienced anything quite as dramatic as some of the above!

There's a lot of urinals - both male and female - at Green Man, but definitely no complaining anywhere near on this scale 

[The Nal]

1 minute ago, rug568 said:

There's a lot of urinals - both male and female - at Green Man, but definitely no complaining anywhere near on this scale 

Because.........theres a lot of urinals

[Jeel]

Just now, The Nal said:

Because.........theres a lot of urinals

Precisely. There were never really queues for the bin toilets and if one was iffy then not difficult to find another one. Still the same complaints about the design/lack of cleaning of them. The steps themselves mean not everyone can use them. they can surely, at least, have a section with a ramp. 

[gizmoman]

4 hours ago, 5co77ie said:

“The Committee on Climate Change estimates that around two-thirds of the emissions reductions we have to achieve in the UK are going to require some kind of change in how people live. There’s a huge opportunity here to role-model these shifts in our own (event) spaces – influencing and nudging people."

- Chiara Badiali, knowledge and sector intelligence lead at sustainable events consultancy Julie’s Bicycle

 

Dorset County Council - Green Charter and Ecological Emergency Strategy

 

https://moderngov.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/documents/s29602/Appendix A - Draft Dorset Council Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy - Progress report - Spri.pdf

 

Low Carbon Dorset guidance for businesses https://www.lowcarbondorset.org.uk/guide-to-reducing-emissions/

Julie's Bicycle (sustainable events consultancy) - https://juliesbicycle.com/

Meegan Jones, Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide - https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315439723/sustainable-event-management-meegan-jones

 

ISO 20121 offers guidance and best practice to help control an event’s environmental impact – in everything from plastic cups and compatible toilets to the use of public transport. It addresses all stages of an event’s supply chain, and includes monitoring and measuring guidelines, KPIs, purchasing choices, circularity and climate impact. Julie’s Bicycle, meanwhile, offers its own free resources for water and waste management, as well as a carbon calculator.  

In addition to Scope 3, ESOS and SECR reporting.

 

Festival goers should be aware the kind of festivals you may have become used to are not what you can expect in the coming years.

 

Festival organisers should be aware that providing a sub-standard experience may well result in them having no festival, your attitude on this is really complacent, if we have to have compost toilets (and there is no law mandating them) we should at least expect them to be fit for purpose. If they are to be used at larger festivals then a new, better design is needed, there is no reason every punter should have to climb 3 steps every time for example, the toilets can be put on a raised platform with a safe ramp access at the end, there is no excuse for the lack of facilities in the cubicle, the fact is, these have been done on the cheap, hoping the punters will put up with them, maybe some will, but as this thread has shown some will think again before spending their money. It's not as if there is a shortage of alternatives, the festival scene is over-saturated with several going this year, Going green shouldn't mean living like someone in the third world, we have the technology to make things better AND greener, no need to put up with this rubbish.

[staffop]

On 9/4/2023 at 3:52 PM, soarous said:

This is the best post I've ever read on this site. And I've read the Twix story at least twice.

Please elaborate on the  'one small, very plain, non-fibrous meal' I'm dying to know more.

Dying to hear the Twix story now - do share please. The old GM forum had a great thread called All Night Disco ruined my Weekend (or something similar)  - was much fun 🙂

[Mardy]

Leaked EOTR toilet plans for 2024...

 

[zahidf]

I think its easy enough to solve, they need to have a lot more urinals and better lighting so people can see the steps.

 

[snipe]

Add more sawdust boxes with better scoops and keep the sawdust boxes filled. Every place only had one sawdust box this year and it was often not near half the toilets it was serving and the cups were bad at scooping enough.

Get a proper pre-festival communication on how there will be much less seen and smelled when sawdust is used and that you are doing your bit etc. and people will actually do the sawdust bit.  This year they just mentioned they'd be compost toilets and linked to the providers site way way down in a general info mail.

Have a little brush to clean up spilled sawdust as any sign of "mess", no matter how benign, on the seat area looks off putting.

[robith]

10 minutes ago, snipe said:

Add more sawdust boxes with better scoops and keep the sawdust boxes filled. Every place only had one sawdust box this year and it was often not near half the toilets it was serving and the cups were bad at scooping enough.

Get a proper pre-festival communication on how there will be much less seen and smelled when sawdust is used and that you are doing your bit etc. and people will actually do the sawdust bit.  This year they just mentioned they'd be compost toilets and linked to the providers site way way down in a general info mail.

Have a little brush to clean up spilled sawdust as any sign of "mess", no matter how benign, on the seat area looks off putting.

Good point - I saw them put up more signs over the weekend instructing how to use them, clearly the learning curve caught them out, and some pre comms might have been better

[The Nal]

The sawdust or lack of wasn't the issue.

The issue was the blokes piss all over the seats and surrounding areas (from lunchtime Thursday) and women having to sit down on that multiple times in the pitch dark with nowhere even to hang a bag. 

Cant imagine the horror and admin of that if you're on the old blobby. 

Understandably caused a lot of hovering so then there was more piss and the odd plopsie that didn't go in the bowl. 

A pathetic little cup of sawdust isn't going to solve that. 

[benali]

7 hours ago, LowerMead said:

At festivals in the 90s you didn't drop the best part of 700 quid on tickets (two adults, a kid and a campervan). 

Simon needs to realise that he's charging people a fair old bunce so should provide some decent services, like EOTR used to do very well.  You may not have encountered any issues but you're probably a healthy adult male, not a woman (with period or fashion challenges - they were hardly outfit friendly, unless you like your clothes covered in piss), a child or someone with mobility issues. 

As was mentioned further up the thread, the staff and performer bogs were not composters - ask yourself why? 

For clarity I have no problem with composting loos per se, or looking at the contents, it's just that the design of the stalls is abysmal from a usage perspective. 

I have a female partner and 2 kids. None of them complained. 

I wasn't sure what was meant by fashion challenges so asked my partner who said "don't wear clothes which require a load of effort to take off for a wee."

She also went to GM with the same toilets at that time of the month and didn't complain then either.

Staff and performers always have better facilities than regular punters, that's a given at pretty much every festival.

I already commented on people with mobility issues who would have struggled but the overwhelming majority of people don't and some of those are seemingly getting irrationally annoyed by something that isn't a big deal.

[Mr Splodge]

Didn’t have a problem with the toilets all weekend, shame about the hovering women missing, sadly followed a few into the toilets and had to clean up after them.

 

[KevRP]

9 hours ago, paulwa said:

I agree. There always were more urinals than this year. Not sure they would take the female only loo option though, in case of trans issues.

Fully agree and you are right to highlight. However, there must be a way that any person who wants sit down shouldn't have to sit in some blokes piss. More urinals and a sit down only area maybe? 

[SighMo]

The rate of turnaround at the couple of urinal cabins was incredible I thought; never waited more than about 30 seconds to get in. Only had a couple of wees in the composts and lifted the seat then used plenty of sanitiser; left the seat up too so next person didn't think it was me who'd wee'd all over it. The composts  near where we camped were mint in the morning when I used them.

[killyourtv]

13 hours ago, snipe said:

Add more sawdust boxes with better scoops and keep the sawdust boxes filled. Every place only had one sawdust box this year and it was often not near half the toilets it was serving and the cups were bad at scooping enough.

Get a proper pre-festival communication on how there will be much less seen and smelled when sawdust is used and that you are doing your bit etc. and people will actually do the sawdust bit.  This year they just mentioned they'd be compost toilets and linked to the providers site way way down in a general info mail.

Have a little brush to clean up spilled sawdust as any sign of "mess", no matter how benign, on the seat area looks off putting.

It took us a day to work out what those funny boxes with sawdust and scoops were for.  Brought back images of village fete lucky dips or something.

[gregory]

13 hours ago, Mr Splodge said:

Didn’t have a problem with the toilets all weekend, shame about the hovering women missing, sadly followed a few into the toilets and had to clean up after them.

 

shame about women having to hover because men miss, but good for your for cleaning up some of the many gallons of piss that missed the target.

[5co77ie]

18 hours ago, gizmoman said:

Going green shouldn't mean living like someone in the third world, we have the technology to make things better AND greener, no need to put up with this rubbish.

I'm sorry but I think you are in for a shock over the next decade if you think Dorset is going to solve a sustainable transition with high tech, or if you think we will be living like we have since we relied on Empire. We are rapidly sliding back to being the 'sick man of Europe' -

The current water companies are on the brink of totally messing up fresh water provision at scale, the government moving the goalposts to make water pollution an acceptable outcome is going to result in sizeable issues things will go down hill rapidly once that bites. Dorset currently has 5 days of light rain forecast in the next 50 days, even hosepipe bans are not going to cut it.

Compost loos save tens of litres of water per person per event and give back to the environment in the way nature was designed. They're sustainable, sanitary, the antidote to sewage pollution and the need for fertilisers - why try to reinvent the wheel?

As others have said provide more urinals, better lighting, and make sitting down mandatory, and the problem solves itself.  Yes there needs be more cups, or I think hessian bags hung in each cubicle full  of sawdust work better.

 

Edited September 6, 2023 by 5co77ie

[gizmoman]

1 hour ago, 5co77ie said:

I'm sorry but I think you are in for a shock over the next decade if you think Dorset is going to solve a sustainable transition with high tech, or if you think we will be living like we have since we relied on Empire. We are rapidly sliding back to being the 'sick man of Europe' -

The current water companies are on the brink of totally messing up fresh water provision at scale, the government moving the goalposts to make water pollution an acceptable outcome is going to result in sizeable issues things will go down hill rapidly once that bites. Dorset currently has 5 days of light rain forecast in the next 50 days, even hosepipe bans are not going to cut it.

Compost loos save tens of litres of water per person per event and give back to the environment in the way nature was designed. They're sustainable, sanitary, the antidote to sewage pollution and the need for fertilisers - why try to reinvent the wheel?

As others have said provide more urinals, better lighting, and make sitting down mandatory, and the problem solves itself.  Yes there needs be more cups, or I think hessian bags hung in each cubicle full  of sawdust work better.

 

The water problems in Britain stem from the privatization and mismanagement of the water companies, that can be solved if there is an appetite for it, we are not short of water, we do need a better "water grid" to pipe water into areas that may occasionally have issues. However none of that is relevant to my argument, I wasn't arguing against compost toilets, just the current implementation of them, better design and improved manufacture could sort out the issues people have had.

"hessian bags hung in each cubicle" Really? is that the level of technology available to us? What about some sort of automatic dispenser? We have people living for months in a space station but can't design a simple system that people are happy to use at a festival. It can be done, needs a bit of investment and imagination. 

[noisenoiseandmorenoise]

3 hours ago, 5co77ie said:

As others have said provide more urinals, better lighting, and make sitting down mandatory, and the problem solves itself.  Yes there needs be more cups, or I think hessian bags hung in each cubicle full  of sawdust work better.

 

I'm sympathetic to your overall argument but this part made me chuckle to think how it could be implemented. I settled on a choir of old ladies positioned outside each cubicle instructing  "now make sure you are sat fully down. And wipe properly when you are finished. There's a good boy/girl".

[The Nal]

I'd love to know who signed off on no lights.

"Will be put some lights over so people can see at night?

"EOTR HQ: "Nah". 

[shoebox]

19 minutes ago, noisenoiseandmorenoise said:

I'm sympathetic to your overall argument but this part made me chuckle to think how it could be implemented. I settled on a choir of old ladies positioned outside each cubicle instructing  "now make sure you are sat fully down. And wipe properly when you are finished. There's a good boy/girl".

Catheters fitted to every attendee upon arrival. Toilets are for dumps only.

[Jeel]

22 hours ago, shoebox said:

Catheters fitted to every attendee upon arrival. Toilets are for dumps only.

It would be cheaper to hand out nappies!

[sadimmock]

2 hours ago, Jeel said:

It would be cheaper to hand out nappies!

I’m not sure that will help with the environmental impact. 

[soarous]

On 9/5/2023 at 4:17 PM, staffop said:

Dying to hear the Twix story now - do share please. The old GM forum had a great thread called All Night Disco ruined my Weekend (or something similar)  - was much fun 🙂

Enjoy.

https://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/212127-the-twix-ninja/