Can a public toilet be built from what a city throws away?
Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) said – Yes.
This is the story of the Aspirational Toilets at Sector 14, Koparkhairane, near Nisargudyan urban garden, highlighted in PIB’s Dignity by Design report on 2nd Oct 2026.
The Location:
Not in a corner. It’s in a busy public space – near an urban garden. Around 8,000 to 9,000 visitors use this facility every single day. That itself proves that if you make a toilet clean and inviting, people will use it.
What It Is Made Of – This is Shocking:
This toilet is not built from cement and tiles only. It is built from the city’s waste.
- 426 square metres of recycled plastic sheeting
- 5.3 metric tonnes of single-use plastic
- 11,700 plastic bottles
- 35,200 bottle caps
- 85 repurposed computer keyboards
- 284 kg of scrap metal
Imagine – the plastic bottles you throw, the bottle caps, the old keyboards in your office – all became a wall, a roof, a toilet.
This is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle not as a slogan, but as a building.
Design – Not Just Eco, But Inclusive:
The builders didn’t just make it from waste and leave it. They made it safe and comfortable:
- Separate sections for men and women – for privacy and safety
- Units for children and persons with disabilities – inclusive design
- Baby care stations – for mothers
- Sanitary pad vending machines – for menstrual hygiene
- A fountain running on treated sewage water – completing the green cycle. Even the sewage is treated and reused for the fountain.
Why This is a Model for All of India:
Under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban’s Toilets 2.0 (2022), the goal is to make toilets safe, clean and inviting.
Navi Mumbai did all three, plus made it sustainable.
It solves two problems at once:
- What to do with 5.3 tonnes of single-use plastic?
- How to make public toilets that people actually want to use?
The answer was – build the toilet FROM the waste.
Today this complex stands in Koparkhairane not as a toilet, but as a symbol of environmental innovation and civic pride, as PIB says.
If every city starts thinking like this – your waste becomes your public infrastructure.
Source: PIB Delhi – “Dignity by Design: Innovation Reshapes India’s Public Toilets” – Navi Mumbai section – 02 OCT 2026
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