Mar 10, 2021 | Schools
Now with a push from many states, and an increase in teacher vaccinations, schools are truly re-opening. At last! But let’s rewind the clock a tick. Early July 2020 was a hopeful time. As Americans, we were planning for a return to some normalcy in the Fall, and for school re-openings. But that was before the summer bump in cases appeared, and before a devastating Fall and Winter. The majority of schools – especially public schools – remained closed. In July 2020, Dr. Tom Keating of Project CLEAN and the American Restroom Association ARA) released a brief article titled, “Ten Things to do NOW to get your School Ready for Students in a COVID-19 World.” Those same 10 things hold true today.
Feb 16, 2021 | Better Public Restrooms
Early on in the pandemic, news outlets were flush with stories about the concerns surrounding public restrooms. People were worried that IF they went out, they’d have no place to go. Even in the best of recent times, public restrooms in the US were dismal or just plain non-existent. ARA President and Co-founder, Steve Soifer, calls them “the laughingstock of the developed world.”
Feb 13, 2021 | Code Improvements and Design
This story is about the disparity of the availability of public restrooms as traditionally defined as “men’s” and “women’s” restrooms. (Again, gender-neutral and family/caregiver restrooms is a story for another day, as well.) When venues are built, builders typically do two things. First, they farm the design of the restrooms off to the newest and least experienced architects. Second, they tell the architects to do the minimum that the code requires. Building codes have for decades specified equal distribution of toilet facilities.
