Student designs waterless, odourless toilet for railways; wins prize

Travelling long distances via train in India has always been a knotty affair, especially when you have to use the train’s loo multiple times. The experience becomes even worse when you have to deal with that ‘nose-wrenching’ foul odour, and water.

Well, all that is soon going to change as a new waterless and odourless toilet has been developed by a Manipal University student Vinod Anthony Thomas.

For his noble invention, the tenth semester student from Faculty of Architecture (FOA) has bagged the second prize of Rs 75,000 in an all-India competition of the India Railways, organized by Research Designs and Standards Organization, Lucknow.

Thomas clinched the second place along with another designer Rahul Garg, and team member Saurabh Hans. This invention will not only help making long train journeys easier for passengers, but also falls in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Clean India Initiative.

Moving to the intricacies of the newly designed toilet, it moves away from traditional unhygienic waste disposal on tracks. His new design effectively introduces a new system of waste management, which prevents the creation of any foul odour and replaces the conventional flush system with a conveyor system for carrying waste in a glass sealed pocket to a large collection bin, which can be operated manually by a crank wheel.

The bin has been designed in a way which will reduce the amount of waste by means of decomposition and forced ventilation. The director of the Faculty of Architecture at Vinod’s college was all praises about him and said that he had made the college proud.