The Invention Fair annually hosted in Geneva is an eye-opener. Among the over 1000 exhibits at this year's fair, a musical closestool made in Switzerland attracts many visitors. The producer told people that if one's lifespan is 80, he/she spends 2500 hours in toilets. This kind of closestool can play music and be painted with colorful pictures, so that people would feel less dull when in lavatory.
The toilet revolution is also going on well in China.
In Beijing alone, W.C.s not only become cleaner but also take a more private shape. Apart from tap water and a good waste-evacuation system, some high-standard washrooms set a rest area, a reading area, public phones and a paper box inside.
The revolution plot was ignited early in 1994. Some departments held contest on toilet design for the first time, and constructed a series of demonstrative toilets which enjoyed welcome and support of the citizens.
In terms of science, researchers also began studying how to build toilets in a scientific way. First Chinese complete vacuum toilet sample has been developed by the department of environment at the Central China Sci-tech University in Wuhan, which has matched the international standard of the same products in the world. It possesses advantages of saving water, smoother flushing, good control of bad smell, and easy to set up compared with the old ones. Nowadays, a kind of flush-free toilet comes into being as a new concept in the toilet revolution.
With the widespread of this new concept, the common water-flush toilets are confronted with challenges. The exponentials on world bio-sanitation point out those water-flush toilets which were the catholicon of the 20th century are the devils of the 21st century.
(21DNN.com 12/25/2000)
