Will there be less public peeing on the streets now there’s a high tech public toilet in Tel Aviv?
Haaretz reporter Roy Arad recently wrote that in all his career as a journalist he has never seen people so happy as the Israelis that have just used 2 The Loo on King George Street in Tel Aviv, a new pay-per-use bathroom offering a clean toilet and foamy soap for NIS 3 (about $1). According to one elderly customer: “You saved a life in Israel.”
The bathroom chain, based on a Dutch business, is open six days a week and serves hundreds of people each day. Free public facilities such as those in the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, notoriously unsanitary, are now also associated in the public imagination with the rape recently committed by an African migrant in the station’s public restroom.
One can only hope that as the business continues to prosper they will invest in conservation technologies to match how limited water resources effect the Israeli public.
Unlike the Netherlands, Israel is not a country with water to spare.
::Haaretz via 2thelooIsrael
Image via 2 The Loo
Author: Leigh Cuen
Leigh Cuen is a freelance journalist currently reporting from Israel. She has written for the Earth Island Journal, the San Francisco Public Press, the Palestinian News Network, J. weekly newspaper and the Women News Network. Follow her @La__Cuen.
Julia,
The Central Bus Station is where the refugees, mostly all without work, loiter and hang out. It’s actually a very big political issue in Israel and no one can ignore that there is a growing concern among the locals on how to deal with the refugee problem. It is not inflammatory. It is correct. There has been a rash of refugee-related rapes and assaults in Tel Aviv, and people there are worried.
RE: the rape of a member of the public…it is irrelevant to the story what nationality the rapist was. This is inflammatory and irresponsible journalism.