Public Toilets in Singapore as Dirty as in 2020: Survey

Singapore may be one of the cleanest cities in the world, but the opposite applies to public toilets in her coffeeshops and hawker centres. The third national survey in seven years, and the first post-pandemic, the whimsically-named “Waterloo” was created and run by SMU Principal Lecturer of Statistics Rosie Ching and her 170 SMU undergraduates. Together, they carried out comprehensive on-site surveys of more than 2,200 public toilets at an excess of 100 hawker centres and 950 coffeeshops around Singapore, evaluating them on more than 100 variables including toilet bowl cleanliness, floor dryness, ventilation.

They found that post-pandemic coffeeshop toilets have stayed dirty and unchanged over the past seven years, staying significantly below the 50-mark of reasonably clean on the zero-to-100 Toilet Cleanliness Index (TCI), with the only bright spot showing hawker centre toilets cleaner than in 2020. Unisex toilets are the dirtiest at 36.14, a sharp decline from 42.89 in 2020. From 2016 to 2020 till now, these shared toilets remain the filthiest, suffering their lowest levels now, with a large majority located in coffeeshops.

Public perception of these toilets was measured using the Human Perception of Toilet Cleanliness (HPTCI) Index, where respondents rated their perception of public toilets on a scale of zero to 100: 100 being the most positive perception of toilet cleanliness, and zero the most negative.

Overall public perception of these toilets is that they are much dirtier than they should be, and no different from they were in 2020 and 2016. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, 66.74% of Singaporeans think that public toilets in coffeeshops and hawker centres have “stayed just as dirty” to “are much dirtier now”, with only 22.18% saying they have improved. Additionally, 63% of citizens rate toilet-cleaning efforts from “mostly ineffective” to “completely ineffective”, with only 6% optimistic about the efficacy of national clean toilet campaigns.

Droves of photographic evidence show wet or oily floors, dirty or clogged sinks, overflowing bins and choked urinals. The in-depth investigation by Ms Ching revealed that the closer cooking facilities are to toilets in these hawker centres and coffee shops, the significantly dirtier the toilets. This was also observed in 2016 and 2020 and remains very strong in 2023, a major public health concern given the huge majority of workers in these premises use these toilets while handling food.
More than nine in ten of customers declared public toilets in need of major overhauling, rating them as “dirty”. More than 75% only use the toilets in these areas for small calls of nature, unchanged from 2020, but a much lower figure than in 2016. As for the big call of nature, almost 70% avoid using these toilets, a significantly higher avoidance rate than in 2020 and 2016.

Waterloo was done to educate students on applying statistics with social impact, helping the World Toilet Organisation (WTO), Public Hygiene Council (PHC), Singapore Kindness Movement (SKM) and Restroom Association Singapore (RAS) in their national efforts to combat the decades-long problem of dirty toilets. Said student Nicole Beh, “I have had the privilege of being a student in Ms Rosie Ching’s Statistics class. We embarked on Waterloo, surveying over 90% of Singapore’s hawker centers and coffee shop toilets to raise awareness about public toilet hygiene. While we continue to make waves in improving the cleanliness of public toilets in Singapore, we hope for even greater improvements in the years to come through nationwide efforts. Ms. Ching has been our strongest pillar of support in achieving the impeccable success of Waterloo and has made learning Statistics more fun than ever.”

Said Ms Ching: “Having a clean toilet to use is a fundamental human right. Yet my treasured Waterloo student comrades and I have exposed yet again thousands of abysmal toilets, many in close proximity with kitchens and food-handling areas. We hope our findings will spur decisive and collective action to improve the state of public toilet hygiene, and protect food handlers and toilet cleaners who face the daily grim spectre of filthy toilets.”

For their commitment to Waterloo, Ms. Ching’s students won Singapore’s national LOO (Let’s Observe Ourselves) Award for public sanitation in the community category. Ms Ching was given the Individual LOO Award for eight years of study of dirty public toilets, and was bestowed the World Toilet Organization Hall of Fame Award for her contributions to improving sanitation. In December 2023, Ms Ching was also awarded QS Reimagine Education’s global Gold Award for Blended and Presence Learning for the effects of creating and teaching Statistics For Social Impact.