Pay toilet

Some establishments such as cafés and restaurants offer tokens to their customers so they can use the toilets for free but other users must pay the relevant charge.

They are situated in public places like bus stations and major markets, but several sulabh shauchalayas also act as community toilets in areas with poor sanitation facilities.

California legislator March Fong Eu argued that they discriminated against females because men and boys could use urinals for free whereas women and girls always had to pay a dime for a toilet "stall" (i.e. cubicle) in places where payment was mandatory.

In 1973, Chicago became the first American city to enact a ban, at a time when, according to The Wall Street Journal, there were at least 50,000 units in America,[7] mostly made by the Nik-O-Lok Company.

[citation needed] CEPTIA was successful over the next few years in obtaining bans in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, California, Florida and Ohio.

In 2007, legislators rescinded ORC Ordinance 4101:1-29-02.6.2, the ban on pay facilities, paving the way for operators to charge for public restroom use.

[13] Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus created this method to ease the financial hardships resulting from the many wars that had been fought.

This was not a popular choice with his people, and he was ridiculed for the decision, to which he reacted with the famous quote, Pecunia non olet, "Money does not stink".

[14] The Scholastica Baths were built in the 1st century AD, and contained all of the modern amenities for hygiene, including advanced public toilets with marble seats.

[15] John Nevil Maskelyne, an English stage magician, invented the first modern pay toilet in the late 19th century.

[17] Whether or not public toilets should require payment is a plot point in Noël Coward's 1949 play South Sea Bubble.

The 1983 Stephen King novel, ‘’Pet Sematary” involves a scene featuring pay toilet and a quote that reads, “JOHN CRAPPER WAS A SEXIST PIG!” written in grease pencil on the stall.

People in developing countries or low incomes, for instance in Accra, may choose to defecate in the open or limit the number of times per day that they use a pay toilet, resulting in undesirable public health consequences.