To celebrate World Toilet Day, the Sustainability Team and Estates Department are coming together to raise awareness of the global issues around access to clean water and sanitation and to save money and reduce wastage of this precious resource.

Spotting leaks and faults

We have over 3000 toilets and urinals across our Canterbury and Medway campuses and each one can use upwards of 100l of water per day. With that many toilets, It is impossible for our maintenance teams to check them all so we rely on staff and students reporting faults such as continuously flushing. Often, especially in office areas, people tend to assume that someone else has reported it so faults are often left unreported for weeks or even months. If left unfixed, each of these can waste 100s of cubic meters of water a year costing upwards of £2000!

Report a fault and ‘Twin your Toilet’

To encourage more people to report faults, the Estates department has pledged to sponsor a toilet through the ‘Twin your Toilet’ scheme for the first 10 toilets to be reported. If you report a faulty toilet you can even nominate your favourite toilet to be twinned! Find out more about water saving, including how to spot a faulty flush.

To report a fault in a university building please contact Estates customer services on (01227 8) 16666. To report a fault in on-site student accommodation please use the Home at halls app.

Did you know: The University has Changing Places Hygiene Room located at the Templeman Library. Changing Places facilities are located around the country and are designed for people who need additional space, equipment, time and for people who cannot use standard accessible toilets and changing facilities

What is the Twin your Toilet scheme?

The Twin your Toilet scheme helps fund projects across the world supporting communities to build safe and clean toilets as well as providing access to clean water. 3.6 billion people globally are still living with inadequate access to clean water and sanitation which leads to poor health outcomes, groundwater pollution and decreased opportunities, particularly for women and girls who can be forced to drop out of education due to no access to safe toilets.

The University of Kent is a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goal Education Accord and this work forms part of our response to Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.

This World Toilet Day, let’s make the invisible visible.