Mumbai's Marine Drive welcomes eco-friendly toilet worth Rs 90 lakh
The most expensive public toilet block in Mumbai is free to use, and equipped with vacuum flushes and solar panels.
The Queen's Necklace has got a new jewel. Mumbai's iconic Marine Drive now has a swanky new toilet block that will serve the thousands of people who throng the 3.7-km-long boulevard. Equipped with solar panels and vacuum technology, the eco-friendly toilet has been built the cost of Rs 90 lakh.
Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray inaugurated the six-block toilet on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti. According to NDTV, leading alloy-maker JSW Group, Samatech Foundation, and the Nariman Point Churchgate Citizens Association came together to set up the free-to-use facility.
A toilet generally requires eight litres of water for a single flush, but this facility uses only 800 ml water, an official of the JSW Group said.
Akshat Gupta, Co-founder of Samatech, said, “The idea is to provide a toilet that has an environment-friendly sewage disposal system and makes limited use of natural resources. Besides saving water, the toilet's vacuum technology will prevent a few million litres of raw sewage from getting flushed directly into the Marine Drive bay each year.”
The structure, supposedly “100-year-proof”, is built of low maintenance weathering steel, which makes it resilient against the saline water and the high tides, reports The Hindu. The toilet block is sectioned off for men and women.
Speaking about the design of the facility, Kapil Gupta, the chief architect of the project, said:
There are capsule-shaped openings to provide cross-ventilation. The facility is S-shaped with separate entrances for male and female. The design is inspired by the Art deco style and will serve as a model of sustainable, environment-friendly technology.
On the cost, he said, “We want to change the narrative of it from being a Rs 1 crore toilet to a toilet for one crore people.”
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