In Jersey City, New Jersey, weekday mornings are bustling at the Journal Square station. People rush in and out of trains and across platforms; most are coming from or going to New York City, commuting to work or dropping children off at daycare.
But a few people near the Journal Square station won’t be stepping onto a train. Instead, they’re stepping into a mobile shower. They’ll be met with soap, warm water and clean towels.
This month, the City of Jersey City launched a pilot program offering free access to showers, bathrooms and a new set of clothes to anyone in need. Many of the people visiting these showers are experiencing homelessness; after their shower, they have the opportunity to talk to coordinators on site who can refer them to additional resources.
A hot shower creates a launching point to connect people with what they need, whether it’s mental health support, checking in with a case manager or receiving SNAP or Medicaid benefits.
Mayor Steven Fulop said that the program goes beyond cleanliness. The goal is to build trust.
“We started to think about how to use the resources — simple things like a shower — as a conduit to building a bond and trust and a larger conversation to steer people towards better services,” Fulop told NationSwell.
The pilot program was created after a series of meetings between citizens and the mayor’s Quality of Life Task Force, a group of leaders from across city departments involved with issues pertaining to the public. One common concern from Journal Square business owners and residents was sanitation in and around the station.
“This isn’t a police issue, this isn’t a prosecution issue … this is really a health and human services issue,” Stacey Flanagan, the director for Health and Human Services of Jersey City told NationSwell.
For a solution, the city turned to a similar one implemented after Hurricane Sandy. To help with recovery from the superstorm’s impact, Jersey City used grant funds to purchase a mobile shower unit. For years, the showers sat unused. Today, the unit has a new purpose. It serves about five people every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.
Jersey City isn’t the first place to implement mobile showers. In Oregon’s Washington County, Community Connection, a coalition of nonprofits, finished building a mobile shower unit earlier this month. The City of San Antonio, California, is currently in discussions to purchase a $58,000 mobile shower.
Since 2014, the nonprofit Lava Mae has been driving throughout San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland serving hundreds of people every week. In California, where there are thousands of individuals facing homelessness and few public showers, the ability to get clean is a challenge.
“Here we are in this first-world country, in a super affluent city, and still, we have people who don’t have access to water and sanitation,” the founder, Doneice Sandoval, told NationSwell.
Flanagan noted that “we’re not promising a shower’s going to change your whole life,” but that being clean can create a sense of dignity. It can give people the courage to interact with business owners, apply for jobs and move through the world without fear of judgment. One man left saying he “felt like a million bucks,” she said.
Currently, the project is projected to run throughout the rest of the year. Afterward, the city will assess the best location and times to offer showers.
Jersey City is part of Hudson County, where homelessness has been on a steady rise over the last three years. A 2019 study conducted by the nonprofit Monarch Housing Associates found a 3% increase — approximately 30 individuals — in the number of people experiencing homelessness from January 2018 to January 2019.
Jobs and affordable housing were among the top causes of homelessness, which gives insight into areas of improvement for Hudson County.
“There are organizations doing great work around homelessness, but there are some things that fall through the cracks,” said Flanagan.
Jersey City also has plans to open a shelter next year that would provide rooms for 150 individuals, with space for 14 people living with HIV/AIDS and six permanent homes.
“I think the system has failed these people in many different ways,” Fulop said. “So doing a simple gesture that most people take for granted on a daily basis, can really go a long way.”
More: Showers and Toilet on Wheels Give Homeless a Clean Slate
Tag: sanitation
Watch Droplets of Water Literally Bounce Off This Eco-Friendly Metal
If you’ve ever lost power because of an ice storm bringing down your electrical lines, you’ll appreciate this new technology from researchers at New York’s University of Rochester.
Working on the microscale and nanoscale, the scientists used powerful lasers to etch parallel groves onto metal surfaces about 0.1mm apart, the BBC reports. The result? “The material is so strongly water-repellent, the water actually gets bounced off,” Rochester optics professor Chunlei Guo says in a news release. “Then it lands on the surface again, gets bounced off again, and then it will just roll off from the surface.” Check out the jaw-dropping videos below.
Unlike other materials that have hydrophobic qualities (such as non-stick Teflon pans) the slippery nature of this surface won’t peel off or degrade over time since it’s not reliant on a chemical coating — meaning that it’s eco-friendly, too.
Much like how lotus leaves stay clean in muddy water, this metal is also self-cleaning. The Rochester team found that when water drops onto the metal, the droplets take dust off with it.
The laser treatment has been successfully used on platinum, titanium and brass, aluminum and stainless steel.
The applications could be limitless: from boats and planes to solar panels and smartphones — basically anything that you want to keep dry or don’t want to rust or freeze over. “Some potential applications for anti-icing surfaces include protection of aerofoils, power transmission lines, pipes of air conditioners and refrigerators, and radar or telecommunication antennas,” the research team writes in the Journal of Applied Physics.
MORE: Need Clean Water? Find the Nearest Evergreen
It can also be used for sanitation purposes. “We wanted to create this super hydrophobic surface that will not only repel water but also repels water containing waste materials,” professor Guo explains in the video below. One possible outcome? A toilet that requires little to no water to flush, while remaining clean and dry. The Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation, which has provided $620,000 in funding for the project, is particularly interested in this aspect, USA Today reports.
Before we get too excited about electrical lines and solar panels that never have ice freeze on them, it’s important to note that it’s going to take some time before the technology becomes widespread. According to the press release, one hour is needed to etch a square inch of the metal.
Which Is Better, Hand Dryers or Paper Towels?
For as long as there have been public restrooms, there’s been a dilemma we’ve all faced after we wash our hands: Paper towel or hand dryer?
Finally, we have an answer, thanks to the team at AsapSCIENCE. As it turns out, there’s definitely a greener choice, while the other is better for germaphobes.
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PAPER TOWELS:
Pro: Moisture is what spreads bacteria the most, so for people who can’t take the time for a hand dryer to completely dry their mitts, paper towels can do the job in 5 to 10 seconds. Friction also removes bacteria as well.
Con: This fact should scare you: 13 billion pounds of this throw-away product are used in the United States alone. To produce one ton of paper towels, it takes 17 trees and 20,000 gallons of water.
HAND DRYER:
Pro: It requires fewer resources and prevents deforestation and high carbon emissions.
Con: Using one takes at least 45 seconds to reduce hand moisture by 97 percent, even though most people only dry their hands for about 22 seconds. Some dryers might also blow bacteria back onto your paws due to contaminated bathroom air.
WINNER:
It really comes down to preference. But it seems the real answer is to wash your hands properly (scrubbing with soap for at least 20 seconds!) and you won’t even need to use either option to get rid of any germs remaining on your hands. After all, it’s important to keep your hands clean — about 80 percent of infectious diseases are transmitted by touch.
As the AsapSCIENCE video explains, if you must use a paper towel, try to use as few as possible. For hints on how to do that, check out this adorable video of Umatilla County District Attorney Joe Smith demonstrating how to dry your hand with a single sheet of paper towel.
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DON’T MISS: This Small Change to Toilet Paper Will Reduce Its Big Environmental Impact
Showers and Toilet on Wheels Give Homeless a Clean Slate
Silas Borden has spent the last five years living on the streets of San Francisco. He’s used to making the best with what he has, so when he stumbled upon a bus offering free showers and toilet, he couldn’t resist. “Living on the streets, no matter how clean you try to stay, you’re going to be grimy,” said Borden as he prepared for his first shower in over a week, “and I want to wash it off.”
Borden is one of the first beneficiaries of a pilot program from the nonprofit Lava Mae, which has retrofitted an old city bus into a souped-up sanitation service on wheels. The bus, which is equipped with two showers and a toilet that run off city water, travels the streets of San Francisco and aims to provide 300 to 500 showers a week.
Doniece Sandoval, the brains behind the operation, was inspired after reading about the lack of options available to the more than 3,000 homeless living on her city’s streets. “There are only seven drop-in centers in the entire city, and that translates to 16-20 shower stalls,” says Sandoval, who plans to add three more buses to her fleet because of the success of these test runs.
Read more about Lava Mae
Forget About Mousetraps. Can We Build a Better Toilet?
Some everyday objects are so basic that you might think they couldn’t be improved upon. Like, for example, the humble toilet.
But The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is betting that scientists can build a better toilet. In 2012, the foundation chose 16 teams to participate in its “Reinventing the Toilet Challenge,” gave them $777,000 in grant money, and sent them off to reinvent the toilet.
One of the hopefuls is a group from the University of Colorado (CU), led by environmental engineering professor Karl Linden. Their innovation? A solar-powered potty. Now, their toilet is ready for its world debut: the team shipped a functional prototype to New Delhi, India, where it will appear in the second annual Reinvent the Toilet Fair on March 22.
Linden told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Boulder Daily Camera that his team’s toilet uses solar energy to convert solid waste into “a sanitary, harmless charcoal-like material that can be used for heating or fertilizing.” Meanwhile, a “urine diverting” feature heats the feces to a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius, killing any potential pathogens and making the resulting fertilizer safe for use. “Obviously, people at fairgrounds don’t want real feces present, so we’re going to make synthetic waste products,” Linden told Hernandez.
If the CU team’s work is judged a success at the fair, they will gain additional funding that will allow them to improve the cost-effectiveness of their design and cope with the problem of generating solar power on cloudy days. “It’s a pretty incredible experience to be able to actually build something that’s physically real because a lot of the work we do in the lab is studying concepts and theories and advancing science that way,” Linden said. And if the team’s toilet lives up to its promise, it’s definitely an innovation that shouldn’t be flushed down the drain.
MORE:How San Francisco Got Its Residents to Care About Sewers