Rethinking Park Bathrooms

Welcome to the Park Leader Show where we are changing the landscape of leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host, Jody Mayberry, and I have two guests with me this time, which isn't common. But we have a very important topic to talk about, and that is bathrooms. And that's such a big topic we needed two people. We have Jessica Heinzelmann and Fletcher Wilson from Throne Labs. You'll find out soon enough about Throne Labs. But, Jessica, let's start with you. First, hello. And second,

tell us about your history with the outdoors. Oh, well, I've always loved the outdoors. I grew up in kind of suburban area that, you know, an afternoon was going out for a walk up, what we called Windy Hill, and it was, you know, one of the places that we could go spend time and be together as a family. So, yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Yeah.

Well, it's wonderful. The the the one of the reasons I asked that even when it's not a park professional on, is just to show that we all have some story of being connected to the outdoors, and and I I think that will come across as well when we talk about this. So, Fletcher, what about you? What is your history with the outdoors? Well, my father was an Eagle Scout, so he he would bring I grew up in in Virginia, and he would bring us camping in various locations.

And I think maybe felt that his camping skills were even better than they really were due to his background in in as an Eagle Scout. So we got into some tricky situations with bears or setting up a tent in the rain, But mostly, I just remember fond memories of fly fishing and long hikes with my dad. So I I think he he brought me up kind of admiring the

outdoors and sleeping outside. And I now have some young children, and I'm waiting for them to get about a year or two older until it's time to take them as well. And one quick recommendation. I feel like one of my most traumatic memories of childhood was my mom sent me on my first backpacking trip with my father when I was about eight years old. And pertaining to this conversation, no one yet had taught me how to go to the bathroom outdoors, and my

father was not equipped to give me advice. And I'll spare the audience the details, but it didn't end well. We've all been there. Who would have known that that little incident at eight years old would lead you to what you do now? My goodness. That's true. Well, every park has one thing in common, and that's a bathroom, a comfort station, a CXT, an outhouse, a pit toilet, a porta potty. In some form or another, we all have bathrooms or restrooms,

multiple forms of them. Our friends in Canada often call them washrooms, which we tend to call them restrooms in the state. But I've spent a lot of time in Canada in 02/2024, and and I picked up some of their lingo. So I'm almost bilingual now, being able to speak Canadian and American. Well, so let's talk about so Throne Labs makes the throne bathroom. And I mentioned all these other forms of bathrooms that we have. What is different about a throne

bathroom? Yeah. So, yeah, we we wanted to add another option on that list that you just mentioned and to solve a couple particular problems. But to paint a picture, the throne is a really nice indoor bathroom that you might find, say, in a hotel lobby, but it can be placed anywhere and, very quickly and flexibly. So it's not connected to infrastructure. It doesn't need to connect into waste and water systems. It's solar powered for all the the power needed to run onboard, and it's

smart. So another piece of what we do is leverage modern technology and sensors to monitor the health of the throne so that our team can make sure the throne is functioning properly wherever it is. And the other thing we do is we leverage real time feedback from the users using it to tell us when it needs to be cleaned or if there's other issues. And so Throne, the company, is providing all the services required to keep a bathroom functioning and clean and allowing someone maybe running a

park to place these single use bathrooms. So it's not a a facility of multiple bathrooms. It's a single use a fully ADA compliant bathroom that can be put anywhere, and you can put multiple across a park and distribute them as needed, for kind of your foot traffic needs. But Thrown takes care of everything. And for the user, flushing toilet, running water sink, mirror, lights, HVAC, and even music and touchless entry and exit. So all these nice features that keep, you know, folks in your

park there longer, happy. You know, parents with children can come in and use them. We have a baby changing table. We provide other amenities, often free menstrual products, and really just try to make it a really familiar indoor bathroom experience, but take the hassle of installing capital equipment out of the hands of of

someone maybe running a park or or other municipal agencies. What this reminds me of a little bit is at Walt Disney World, they have sensors in all of their trash cans, so the custodial cast members can just pull up an iPad and see which trash cans need the bag changed. And it saves, one, it it saves a lot of time because they don't have to go check everyone. They know, and it happens so much

quicker. And we don't have a whole lot of examples yet of that sort of technology entering into parks, but I can see where a thrown bathroom is a step in that direction. Technology helping serve our visitors and keep bathrooms clean and and just to serve better because we bathrooms are always a challenge. Parks are more popular now than they have been in a very long time, and we have more visitors in the same amount of

bathrooms. Where did this idea come from? What problem did ThroneLab set out to solve? I'll let Oetcher take this on it. It's his it's his brainchild.

Well, I think the it's also it was my problem, originally that got us thinking about it, which was I'm one of those people that just, often finds myself out and about and needing to use a bathroom. Let's just leave it at that. And my I like to say my my GI system is

my worst system. So I'm the Larry David of the group, always sort of out and about, kinda complaining about whatever bathrooms are there and and really felt that you know, you look around at porta potties or other bathroom options, and it it felt to me that some combination of of modern technology and modular manufacturing could allow us to to really rethink bathroom infrastructure

in a more flexible and kind of user centric way. I think that the traditional portable sanitation industry has solved the flexibility part, but we believe has sort of left the user out of the

equation as an important stakeholder. And so we've we really do everything we can to make the bathroom experience great for the user because, you know, it really started from a place of knowing what it's like when you really need a bathroom and and one's not there, or you really need a bathroom and one is is so terrible to use that you're, you know, not happy to go in. Yeah. And I think, you know, when I heard this idea from

Fletcher, I was really intrigued. Other than my early issue in the outdoors and the desolation wilderness in the Tahoe area, I've had a pretty easy time with bathrooms throughout my life. I'm not particularly fickle. I have a fairly strong bladder, but did start talking to a number of friends and realized what a problem it was for people. And I think there's been a

lot more interesting research since then. You know, forty four percent of people feel anxious when they have to use the restroom outside of other home. And so really just got interested in that. And I had worked

on how to use primarily communication technologies to solve the world's big problems, a lot of work in international development and social media, and really saw this opportunity. And I think one thing that I love about what we've built with Thrown is it's not only the the smart sensors that we have on board, but that when somebody enters, we actually ask them for a cleanliness rating and give them the opportunity to tell us about their experience and what might need

improvement. And what that also does is make every user a partner in the eyes of Thrown. So we're able to integrate that in information from our users real time into our operations. And I'm sure every park manager knows this, but people want to tell you when there's something wrong. They're not gonna spend twenty minutes of their day at the park trying to find somebody to tell them. But if the opportunity is presented to

them, say, on their phone to give input, they will. And sometimes we get excruciating detail that that may that makes our Slack channels and our communications very interesting. But, yeah, generally, like, I think that is one of the pieces that's really wonderful about what we've built is we're actually making the user a partner of ours in maintaining the cleanliness and delightfulness of their bathroom experience. Well, you've touched on something that I think actually can make a difference.

In people feeling comfortable using the outdoors and therefore making the outdoors more accessible. I recall a time a park I was at. We were planning a Hispanic heritage celebration, and the local paper was getting involved. They were sponsoring. They were gonna be there to cover it. They were so they sent someone out, and we were I was showing her where everything was going to be. And I just remember how disease she was about being in the outdoors and thinking,

oh, I don't think she had ever been for a hike before. So to me, that's kind of exciting to introduce someone to the outdoors. And, yeah, I do recall she made a comment about we just had one CXT building with two doors. So one cedar on each side, and she just found that very unappealing. And I I think that would have made it less likely that she would recreate in that area of the park knowing that

was the bathroom facilities. And I never really put these pieces together until I was introduced to the throne bathroom thinking, I wonder if someone like that who's used to the city, who doesn't come to the outdoors often, if that would make her more comfortable recreating in the outdoors just knowing Jessica mentioned forty four percent of people feel anxious when they have to use the restroom outside of of home. So does that mean those people

don't recreate for that very reason? Maybe. And this could help with that. So that was something I never thought of until I started reading about the throne bathroom. Yeah. And I think it's interesting when you

look at you look a little deeper into the demographics of that, of who it is that feels the most anxious or anxiety. And one of the things that I'm really passionate about as a female myself or a sitter, if you will, in the bathroom space is that I do think we get a lot more positive feedback from women or people who sit in the bathroom because it just matters a little bit more. We pay a higher price for a less clean restroom. It's a little grosser, a little bit more of an ick

factor. And then I think that extends to people with young children. One of our goals is to have, you know, a a space where if you bring in your toddler, you feel okay if they touch all the walls or, you know, somebody with medical issues that might require more frequent or more frequent

bathroom visits or a cleaner space. We've had lots of conversations with, you know, people with colostomy bags that actually really value the cleanliness because they're actually able to do the changing that they need in a throne restroom that they wouldn't feel comfortable doing in a in a place that felt a little less sanitary. Well, Jessica brings up a good point. When Fletcher and I have to use the restroom outdoors, it's much lower stakes than when she

does. Yeah. So when Yeah. When we're talking about thrown restrooms, is this only for city parks? Is that the setting we're looking at? Can it be in in more rural areas? Yeah. So it can it can we've really designed the bathroom to be agnostic to the environment in which it goes. You know, there are certainly other operational considerations the further out you go, but there's really no fundamental limitation

as to where we put a throne. So we've got thrones in various types of city parks, and we've we've definitely done experiments and put thrones temporarily in more, like, in Charlottesville, Virginia and in parks kind of more in the outskirts. And so, yeah, they really can go anywhere you might need a bathroom, and, certainly, we we work to then fit the operational plan around that.

There's a county park that is close to my house. I walk there with my dog all the time, and there is a single stand alone porta potty that's the only facility there. So if a county park let's say it's my county, and they they're thinking of revisiting what they do for facilities and how they do it, What is the benefit of choosing a throne bathroom over the classic porta potty? Oh, so many. I think we're in a a class all around in the portable,

space. But I think just the feeling of it, it feels like a really nice indoor bathroom as as Fletcher mentioned and is completely touchless and has the running water sink and flushing toilet so people can wash their hands. We do have sensors on that, so we know when wastewater is filling up or fresh water is running down, and so we're able

to actually get out and service it out of any sort of need. And then I think also the data informed operations that help us really keep it clean and nice and the ability for users to provide direct feedback, people love that. They love giving their opinion, whether it's, hey. This needs attention or, you know, this was a great experience. And then I think the other thing that that we're just really proud of as well is the meaningful difference in access and the equity in access.

So in the portable space, there are what they call, like, disabled porta potties, but they're not truly accessible. They don't meet ADA requirements where we've very consciously designed the unit to exceed federal ADA standards and really be able to be used by anybody that needs it. And then offering those additional little things like free menstrual products that just continue to make public space welcoming and available to all. Well, I'm gonna take it up

one more level. So if a park system is considering or realizing porta potty doesn't work, we get too much visitation, we can't keep up, it's not the facility or the image that we need for our park. And so I'm in the Western United States where CXTs are very popular, which is a concrete outhouse. Jessica, being in the West, perhaps you've seen them if you've gone to Forest Service or some other park. So what what is the benefit over a throne bathroom compared to a

concrete outhouse like a CXT? Yeah. I

think there are two main ones. Number one is just time to get it down. So if you have a mandate to drastically improve bathroom access and you you kind of start drawing up architectural plans and permitting to kind of build a CXT versus drone, which, you know, we can place in a couple hours, a variety of bathrooms, and they're just operational. So really quick to get down without that really large upfront

payment. That's the other big piece. And I think the second piece, which Jess touched on, is if you wanna focus your activities on other aspects of making a park a great place for folks but don't really wanna have to worry about bathrooms, I think that's really Thrown's primary benefit is we can kind of take all the hassle of bathrooms from cleaning, maintenance, supplies, etcetera, but also user complaints. That's a big one that we hear, like, sort of users

we disintermediate the the little complaints about, hey. The toilet paper is out and take that on. And so, basically, quick access to to bathrooms without the upfront cost and taking the hassle of providing bathrooms off the hands of of folks who wanna kind of focus on other things more core to sort of the park experience. I think, additionally,

like, the flexibility. So unlike a built bathroom, a throne can be moved, and we are collecting data on how many uses a day, what time of day, day of week these uses are happening. And very, very few people actually have data on bathroom use. I've talked to so many parks, so many cities, so many transit agencies, and none of them really know how many times a day their bathrooms get used. And so we've actually worked with customers. One example is the parks and rec in Fairfax,

Virginia. We've placed five thrones throughout that city, and we've actually moved them over time because where it was originally thought they might be useful, turns out, you know, it was getting less than, you know, three uses a day. We were able to kind of move that throne to a little league field and see that jump to an average of 45 uses a day. So really being able to monitor what value you're providing to your visitors. And if it's not providing the value you're aiming for,

actually, like, moving it and testing it. We're also doing that in Ann Arbor. Interestingly, we had a ton of drones in their parks during the summer. Obviously, a very cold climate where parks visitation is going down in the winter, and we were able to move them more into the downtown or to warming shelters that were experiencing

overflow in their restrooms during the cold months. So we're actually able to also kind of help adapt either seasonally or as the, like as learning happens around the the true dynamics of bathroom need. Well, I I've always been a fan of CXTs, but Jessica and Fletcher have hit on something here, and that is the flexibility. Once you have a CXT in place, you always have that CXT in place. You can't change with park use patterns,

seasonality changes. You can't adjust to any of that, but yet you you can with a throne bathroom. And this, I don't remember if I mentioned it at the beginning, but I rarely have episodes of the show about products. Only if I feel, okay. This is something innovative enough that we need to talk about it on the show. And I just really like the idea of rethinking park bathrooms. For the most part, they've been the same for decades, whether it's a a porta potty, an outhouse, a pit toilet,

or a classic park bathroom. They have more or less been the same for decades, and I thrown bathrooms are one of the first that I've found that is rethinking it and doing something different and adding flexibility and moving it towards, okay, our budget calls for installing a restroom facility to how can we use this restroom facility to best serve visitors and adjust as that changes over time. I think that one of the things that really caught me about this is is a CXT, wonderful product.

But if you put it at a trailhead and then maybe a road gets closed, you still always have that CXT there. And I think

one other kind of fun part about Thrown, sometimes I think things in this world get made smart, and they don't really need to be made smart. I think with bathrooms, it just unlocks all these little opportunities. An

example would be hours of operation. Right? Throne can just have the the bathroom you tell us when you want the bathroom to open and close so you don't have sort of, I don't know, after hours, nefarious activity concerns, or the concern of the, you know, the person on shift having to go lock the throne you know, the bathroom up at the end of the day. Announcements. Let's say you have specific events at parks. We can kind of work

announcements into the into the throne. There's and and, you know, custom graphics if you wanna promote something or take credit for something on on these big we use these beautiful kind of vinyl printed, surfaces on the inside and outside. And so I think there's just a lot you can do when you have this company just focused on bathrooms and leveraging kind of technology, you know, to solve other little problems of around, day to day around bathrooms.

Fletcher, you touched on one of the things I wanted to ask that you can set hours for open and close. And this is great for two ways. If my county parks, the county I live in, we have some fantastic parks that, like many county park systems, are way understaffed. And they have to usually just leave the restroom open twenty four hours a day because they don't have the staff to send

through the whole county to open and close. Well, this solves that problem, and you will get because I've had this at parks I've worked at, that sometimes you will get people even sleeping in bathrooms if you don't close them. Yeah. Because when it gets colder, sometimes people will just show up. I've even had people make fires in

bathrooms because it was open. And and so thrown if you are understaffed, thrown bathrooms, being able to open and close at certain times, it's like having a seasonal parkade that can just go and open and close all of your restrooms, which I think is a wonderful feature. And I think importantly simultaneously. So it all happens at once. If you want it closed at sunset, every throne is going to close at sunset. Mhmm. And so we can do

that. I think the other thing I've heard from a lot of parks is, you know, part of that process is checking that no one's in there, that you're not locking anybody in who's hiding and trying to stay overnight. And so the way that our system works when it does go off for the evening is it will you know, the time we've set ends, and then we have occupancy sensors

inside. So there's really nowhere to hide. So we know if someone's in there. If someone's in there at the time of close, it actually waits until they've exited and will then go off for the evening. If they are trying to stay, we have sensors. We have a ten minute limit is our standard, and our remote monitoring team gets a note that somebody stayed over the ten minutes. Our exit methodology kicks in,

tries to move them along. If they're still not moving, then we know that, and then we can communicate that to your team so that that they can go out and deal with it as needed, but don't need to be there doing the rounds every night and every morning. Well, you mentioned a couple of cities that you're in, like Ann Arbor. What has the feedback been? And in that, have you had real use situations where they're being used in a city park and you get feedback and say, okay.

Now we understand better. We and made a change based on park usage. Well, the feedback is excellent. In a number of cities, we've actually we have signs on the outside that we've partnered with the city on collecting feedback. DC is one of them. We actually have them one kind of on the edge of DuPont Circle. We have one kind of on the edge

of National Park on the mall. Those are very popular ones, and we're able to kind of pull consistently, like, 80 to 92% of people love or like thrones and really think that it's a great bathroom solution compared to what is oftentimes either no bathroom solution, porta potties, or restrooms that are kind of not clean to the level that they would like. And I think another great point has been in Ann Arbor and and our

partner there who oversees parks and rec. I think I had a quote saying in my twenty five years of overseeing different projects, municipal projects throughout parks and and housing development, Thrown is the biggest success we've had yet. I think there was a lot of skepticism going into launching both in cities and parks within Ann Arbor around, you know, bathrooms that are going to serve both folks shopping around town, but also folks experiencing

homelessness, also folks recreationalists. And I think what they kind of came back with is just sort of this this feeling that we've never seen one product that serves so many different types of people so well. And certainly, you know, folks in Ann Arbor would, I think, be happy to kinda take

any sort of preference calls on this. I think, yep, as for specific examples of a feedback we've gotten within parks, I think most of it has to do with this flexibility and the ability to kinda move things around and see both seasonally and and really, like, okay. We tried this trail header. Even sometimes we've done a couple smaller moves where it's just this side of a field versus that side of the field totally changes

things. So I think it's that flexibility has been particularly useful in parks and keeping, you know and I think another area where it works really well are situations where there are maybe monthly large events sort of nearby where maybe there's a promenade or an area at the core of a park where they're likely to throw events. So it serves as a general use bathroom, but then can also serve more as an events bathroom in some of those situations. Yeah. And I think

decoupling restrooms as well. Oftentimes, if a park is doing plumbed restrooms, the distance from the sewer and water to the location where you're putting the restroom costs a ton of money, so you're not always in the optimal spot. And we've worked with the city of Hyattsville in Maryland where we've actually had one thrown near one field, another thrown near another field, and it

really cuts down on the need for somebody to walk. So if you think about it practically, what that means is a parent might miss, you know, less of their kid's game because they didn't have to walk seven minutes across numerous fields to get to a restroom, but they're able to actually spread it out across the the entire

area to have more accessibility. Yeah. I think that's a really good point where why throne works especially well in parks and it has to do with, you know, we didn't choose to come up with this block of bathrooms, but it allows these island bathrooms because parks do tend to be more distributed use cases, right, where you don't have a hundred people in 10 by 10 foot areas where maybe you do want higher

volume kind of access. But by being able to place these island bathroom facilities strategically at the trailhead, at the parking lot, you know, at these different locations, I think you can just you'd be surprised how grateful people are for that sort of, you know, convenience. I was at a city park not long ago where they chose to just close their permanent restrooms that staff had to clean and maintain and just put up,

I think, four or five porta potties in its place. That is, from what I've seen, ideal use case for a thrown bathroom. Yeah. I'll tell one quick story. I remember very early on, we were testing things out at a park in Virginia, and it was a snowy day. And we put one of our early primitive thrones

down about 10 feet from a bank of porta potties. And the coolest thing ever is, you know, we were able to look at this experiment based on footprints in the snow as to who's going to throne versus the porta potties. And, let's just say our our trail was a little, more heavily trodden. Well, that's that's great. And I think there are some features of throne that were just casually mentioned, the the technology, the data, the smart features, the music. The inside can look

different based on your needs. So there is so much more. So, Fletcher, Jessica, if we've heard all of this and say, oh, we need to find out a little more. This might fit our needs. Where can we find out more about Throne? Yeah. Come to our website, which is thronelabs.co. So thr0nelabs.co. Alright. Well, I appreciate you two taking the time to come and talk bathrooms with me. It's not often I get to just sit and talk bathrooms for this long. We love we love talking to

kindred bathroom spirits and appreciators. Wonderful. Well, hopefully, we'll run into each other in in a park and perhaps in line for the bathroom. Great. Alright. Looking forward to it. Thanks for having us, Jetty. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And thank you for listening to the Park Leader Show.