Warning: involves discussion of personal hygiene products.
I got to thinking this morning about the little metal boxes in public washrooms. They've always bothered me, mainly because they just don't seem like they can possibly be clean. Also, I went to a high school where people would just pile the paper bag full, instead of putting one pad in a bag and then removing the whole works to the main garbage bin. That's the problem: we have a paper bag dispenser that looks like a very small garbage bin. By putting a lid on it, users are encouraged to just leave their waste in it. The lid also poses a sanitation problem. Let's face it, do you really want to touch something that someone else has touched when you know that everyone using it is coming into contact with some fairly private bodily fluids?
So, what's my solution, then? Install paper bag dispensers that actually look and act like paper bag dispensers, instead of mini garbage bins. Just make something like a paper towel dispenser and fill it with little paper bags. Users will be forced to take the bags to the main garbage bin. Problem solved. Each user only touches one bag, and there's nowhere to leave the bags in the individual stall. Put a sticker on the dispenser, if you must, that tells people not to flush their bags.
I got to thinking this morning about the little metal boxes in public washrooms. They've always bothered me, mainly because they just don't seem like they can possibly be clean. Also, I went to a high school where people would just pile the paper bag full, instead of putting one pad in a bag and then removing the whole works to the main garbage bin. That's the problem: we have a paper bag dispenser that looks like a very small garbage bin. By putting a lid on it, users are encouraged to just leave their waste in it. The lid also poses a sanitation problem. Let's face it, do you really want to touch something that someone else has touched when you know that everyone using it is coming into contact with some fairly private bodily fluids?
So, what's my solution, then? Install paper bag dispensers that actually look and act like paper bag dispensers, instead of mini garbage bins. Just make something like a paper towel dispenser and fill it with little paper bags. Users will be forced to take the bags to the main garbage bin. Problem solved. Each user only touches one bag, and there's nowhere to leave the bags in the individual stall. Put a sticker on the dispenser, if you must, that tells people not to flush their bags.
I believe there is also an education outreach problem, as until I read this I was unaware that the expectation was to take the wax/paper bag out to the main garbage container. Apparently I assumed all of the extra brown bag things were for custodians.Also, when I was a janitor for CAA in St. Catharines in high school, I was instructed on how to put the brown bag in, and it involved trying to attach it to the metal as one would a plastic bag in a container (wrapping the edges around over the lip). Didn't work so well. I now understand why it barely worked--IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO!Telling people to take the brown bags to the main garbage + changing the availability of the brown bags (your suggestion of no lid, and maybe leaving them stacked against each other rather than one open like a bag and the rest looking like refills) = potential success.Booyah.