Hygiene, health and savings for school bathrooms

Posted on01/27/2022 by


Despite the fact that we are getting older more and more quickly (or so it seems), I still often remember the experiences and mishaps that I went through when I was a little boy at school. So that nobody can try to work out my age, I'm not going to specify exactly what years I’m talking about, but I’ll drop a hint by saying that I’ve seen my fair share of changes to the seasons and that, back then, TV series like the A-team or Knight Rider dominated the small screen. These images and sounds seem to be recorded and stored inside our minds. They make up a tiny, dormant part of ourselves, but this part is always there reminding us who we are and where we come from.  

The other day, while chatting with a friend about our adventures and misadventures in that era at school, and while we were asking each other the recurring question “What happened to so and so?”, I realised (perhaps due to professional reasons, as I work at Mediclinics) that many of these memories and images are linked to a place we don't like to talk about much, perhaps because it makes us more human, and that place is the toilet or bathroom.  Nobody forgets all those experiences; those plots, secrets, disputes, laughter, small fights or squabbles, flirty moments in front of the mirror to practice charming our first love, graffiti with messages of love or hate adorning the walls, and the list goes on. 

There are so many of these moments that it would be impossible to choose just a single one. But if there is one thing they all have in common, it is the large number of people and children who experienced them. If we really think about it, the school toilets often turned into a “little zoo”, a “little piece of chaos”.   When talking to the friend I mentioned earlier, we wondered whether things would be the same today with the whole issue of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Although we more or less guessed that many things would have changed, we went home with this question in our minds.

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What do school toilets look like today?

It was the next day when, in my eagerness to know the answer, I decided to call my friend Carlos, who is a secretary at a public primary school in the centre of Barcelona.

Since I was so interested in the subject, it could be a long conversation and it had been a while since we had seen each other, so I decided to invite him to lunch at a well-known restaurant in the Catalan capital.

After the initial fist bumps and once we had caught up over the first course, I decided to attack with my questions on the subject in the second and third courses.

To put everything in context and avoid being so direct straight away, I decided to tell him first about the meeting, conversation and final question I had the other day with Xavier, my other childhood friend from school.  Are school toilets the same as they used to be when we were children? How have they changed?

“Pfff,” I still remember my friend exhaling sharply before looking up and taking about 3 or 4 seconds to reply. Thank goodness we hadn't started the second course yet and we were still wearing masks!

After the first hint of a smile, he replied with a deep and resounding “NO”. He explained to me that things had changed a lot due to the use of mobile phones, social networks and new technologies.  “Children today look at screens, they don’t play or interact personally as much as they did back then, they don’t even look each other in the eye,” I remember him telling me. 

 


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But above all else, it was impossible for things to be the same today as they were back then, as the pandemic had changed the protocols and the access children have to school toilets. Today, for example, it is not possible for more than one person, whether they are a teacher or a pupil, to enter the bathroom. They are expected to do so one at a time and following a strict queuing system.  This is also controlled by the school’s new guardians: its teaching staff.  This, combined with the fact that a school toilet in winter is more like an igloo than anything else (the windows are open most of the day), makes it a lonely but necessary place in which you would not want to linger for more than two minutes. Order and control were the words he used most often in the conversation.

After a few moments of disillusionment and inner sadness about what I was hearing (perhaps I suddenly became the child I was back then who didn't want to accept it), I decided to investigate a little more on the subject. 

I asked Carlos directly about what it is like to manage the toilets in a school like his during a pandemic. “It’s not easy at all,” he replied. I then decided to listen to him for 20 minutes without interrupting him even once, as he told me all about the main difficulties and problems he encounters. 

To summarise, these are: 

1. As a result of more intensive use and the importance of practising more thorough hand hygiene, they have a serious problem keeping the rooms clean due to the accumulation of papers towels and other litter on the floor. Bins are often overflowing with paper.

2. Moreover, today’s children and teenagers are not known for their careful treatment of bathroom equipment and accessories, such as soap dispensers, waste bins, paper rolls, mirrors, washbasins, hand dryers, etc.

3. This has resulted in a huge increase in the cost of replacing equipment and purchasing paper, as well as in the management, maintenance and cleaning of toilet facilities

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4.
To make matters worse, the problem is exacerbated by the existence of own-brand hand dryers, which thanks to their poor quality have already stopped working (I remember that my friend told me this in a half-ashamed and hurried manner, as he was aware that he was talking to his friend, but also that he was talking to a professional who worked for a hand dryer manufacturing company).

5. Moreover, he has heard, even at a parent-teacher meeting, that hand dryers are not a very hygienic method of drying hands in the Coronavirus pandemic. So, even if they had not stopped working, he acknowledged that they would probably have considered unplugging them.

Then, after taking note of each of the points and excusing myself for a few minutes to go to the restaurant toilet, I returned to the table determined to respond to these points and help him out, presenting him with the best alternatives and solutions to his problems. “Look Carlos, what I'm going to give you now are a few tips as a friend and as a professional working in the shared bathroom industry”.


Tips on how to manage shared school bathrooms properly

Firstly, to solve the problems he has with paper towels, regarding the lack of hygiene and cleanliness that this causes, especially on the floor, and to avoid the huge monthly expense of buying paper towels, I strongly recommended the installation of the latest generation of eco-quick hand dryers. This would offer students and teachers the same or an even more efficient level of hand drying (in just 10 seconds) than paper towels , while also leaving the floor much cleaner and clearer. This would result in a much more hygienic and healthier space and also in large savings in bathroom maintenance costs. On the other hand, as these hand dryers are energy efficient, they would save on the huge cost of buying paper towels. In order for him to really become aware of the latter point, I used my phone to show him the calculator tool that we currently have on the Mediclinics website. I still remember how astonished and happy he looked when he saw the thousands of euros a year that they could save by installing these eco-quick hand dryers in their school instead of using so much paper.



Secondly, with regards to his assessment of how poorly many pupils treat the bathroom equipment and accessories, I added that this is not just a modern problem but that it is timeless and is repeated over the years and generations.  In order to remedy this problem, I recommended purchasing and installing bathroom accessories made of stronger materials (such as stainless steel). Additionally, I suggested that he install
soap dispensers and hand dryers with vandal-proof locks. This would avoid the many headaches caused by vandalism. “Any bathroom equipment or accessory made of good materials always seems more expensive to start with, but they will end up being much more cost-effective in the long run as they last much longer and don’t have to be replaced so quickly. Because cheap always ends up being expensive,” I concluded. 

This last phrase helped me to move on to the next thorny issue: the presence of unplugged own-brand hand dryers in his school bathrooms. To make him feel less embarrassed and more reassured, I started by telling him not to worry because, unfortunately, it was more of a widespread problem than I would like.  It is at this point that I wanted to reinforce and highlight the importance of manufacturing brands such as Mediclinics, which always offer quality and reliability in their products and services. I emphasised the importance of quality as a value of reliability, trust, savings, efficiency and profitability in the short, medium and long term. “Because cheap always ends up being expensive,” I said again.

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And I finally got to the point I was most looking forward to making, because of the anger and annoyance it causes me: The
fake news that has emerged during the pandemic in relation to the theoretical harmful effects of automatic hand dryers in transmitting Coronavirus, which has apparently led to some companies, organisations and educational institutions (just like his school) deciding to unplug them. It took me less than half a second to whip out my smartphone again and show Carlos some of the posts we had published on our website’s blog talking about this. 

I ended by pointing out that major global health organisations such as the WHO and the CDC, as well as major European governments such as the Spanish, English and German governments have spoken out on this issue, mentioning that hand dryers are as reliable, effective and safe a method as paper towels when it comes to drying hands and dealing with COVID-19.


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To finish off and emphasise their reliability, I talked to him about some of the innovations and features that a brand like Mediclinics has incorporated in their hand dryers, such as the
hepa filter media, the Biocote antibacterial additive and the Ion Hygienic technology (ionisers), capable of deactivating and eliminating viruses and bacteria.

With the sentence “Hygiene, health and savings are the biggest trends in the bathroom sector”, I ended my talk and recommendations for my friend Carlos.

 


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It was then, when he stood up with a satisfied smile and looked as though he wanted to hug me (in the end he held back because of Coronavirus), that he said he wanted to thank me enormously for the advice I had offered him, going on to add that he would certainly talk to the headmaster of his school to get them installed as soon as possible. 

“Ah,” I said, “I do know how you could thank me: Remember that collection of ‘Once Upon a Time... Life’ books for children you had at home?” “Of course I remember!” he replied. “But do you want them for your daughter or for yourself?” he asked me.  The two of us then looked at each other and came to the end of our meal roaring with laughter.

 



Enrique González
Online Marketing Manager
Mediclinics S,A

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