Mobile Toilet: The Most Despicable Toilet

Mobile toilets do have some drawbacks and have sparked controversies, as detailed below:

1. Inconvenient to Use
   Mobile toilets are often not firmly connected to the ground, making them prone to wobbling or even tipping over due to external forces, which poses safety risks. Their internal space is relatively cramped, not only making it difficult for users to maintain hygiene but also making it challenging for obese individuals or those with lower limb mobility issues to enter and use, thereby reducing the overall user experience.

2. Difficult to Maintain Hygiene
   Due to their limited capacity, mobile toilets can easily develop unpleasant odors and breed harmful microorganisms such as bacteria if not cleaned promptly, affecting environmental hygiene and human health. During special periods like pandemics, there may also be risks of disease transmission. Additionally, some water-related facilities, if left unused or idle for extended periods, may experience technical issues such as pipe ruptures and leaks, further exacerbating the deterioration of hygiene conditions. For example, the mobile toilets in the Jiajiaye No.1 Residence community once suffered from fecal accumulation and foul odors due to improper use or delayed cleaning by workers, seriously affecting the surrounding environment and residents' health.

3. Difficult to Protect Privacy
   The cramped space of mobile toilets fails to provide users with sufficient privacy, making them vulnerable to being observed by outsiders during use. Moreover, during cleaning, users may come into contact with cleaners, causing psychological distress to users.

4. Relatively High Costs
   Mobile toilets require significant investments in labor, cleaning, and transportation costs for maintenance. Additionally, due to their structural characteristics, repair costs are also relatively high, increasing overall operating costs.

5. Unreasonable Fees and Designs
   Some mobile public toilets have issues with excessively high fees or unreasonable designs. For example, a mobile public toilet in Fujian charged as much as 10 yuan per use and was equipped with a countdown timer. Although the operator claimed that the countdown was merely a reminder and there was no actual time limit for use, this design still sparked widespread dissatisfaction among netizens, who felt it was oppressive and questioned the excessive commercialization of public toilets.

6. Absurd Incidents Have Occurred
   Mobile toilets have also been involved in absurd incidents due to management negligence. For example, on May 11, 2025, a young woman named Xia in Hangzhou was in a mobile toilet in the parking lot of the West Lake scenic area when the toilet was mistakenly loaded onto a truck and traveled 38 kilometers on the Shanghai-Kunming Expressway. This incident attracted widespread social attention.