The new and “improved” AISG Restroom Systems

Reconstruction and remodeling are quite common for buildings in our everyday life. There might not be a perfect plan or layout for the design of an environment, but there is always room for improvement. However, the recent changes to the AISG restrooms make me wonder if these changes can truly be considered improvements.

The first change I would like to discuss is the change made to the placement of mirrors. These mirrors were moved from the wall adjacent to the sinks to the wall next to the door. Question: Why? why can we no longer see our reflection when we wash our hands unless we turn around now? Why employ manpower and time to move the mirrors? What benefits does that even provide? (provide any answers in the comments below) It just seems pointless that looking at the mirrors now requires additional muscle movements.

Despite this questionable change, the new automatic soap dispenser does, however, make sure people don’t use as much soap as before. It’s not like the change from manual to automatic is going to improve hygiene as the soap is not different from the way it is dispensed. Therefore, the change is mainly an economic decision. However, is the automatic soap dispenser truly more cost-effective than manual ones?

By comparing the cost of initially buying new dispensers with the operating cost between automatic and manual dispensers we can estimate the cost or perhaps profit for replacing the manual soap dispensers. The amount of students and faculty members remains the same, and the average person usually washes their hands using three pumps of soap per day when using the manual dispenser. However, the automatic soap dispenser would reduce this amount to one or two pumps per day. Thereby accounting for all the mentioned variables to be held constant, the only factor being changed would be the number of pumps used. This would mean that the cost per pump would remain the same. By multiplying the number of people at school who use soap with the average pumps of soap used each day, thereby allowing us to find the total pumps of soap used in a selected time interval. By multiplying the total pumps by the cost per pump, we can determine the operating cost of either model of soap dispensers. Considering that every variable except for the total pumps is the same, we can estimate that the cost for operating the automatic soap dispensers would be around half of the price of operating manual dispensers. However, I have no doubt that the automatic soap dispensers cost more than the manual models, so we would need to take initial cost of buying the automatic soap dispensers into question. This is not taking into account the money spent on batteries to operate these automatic dispensers. So even if the operating cost is less, it would still take a while for the costs to break even.

These changes to AISG restrooms seem to have minimum benefits as to me it seems like the money and time spent on these changes were unnecessary, and those resources could’ve been used to improve other areas of our school.