Orange peels for toilet cleaning | Fusion - WeRIndia

Orange peels are widely used in cosmetics and alternative medicine.

Here is an alumnus from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Dhanbad who developed an inexpensive and innovative solution with orange peels to clean toilets.

Public toilets normally stink. In Jamshedpur, around 58 public toilets have been identified with unbearable stink.

It is quite common to use chemical cleaning agents for the toilets to keep them neat and odor-free. The chemicals though clean tiles and toilets, kills the bacteria that help in fecal sludge treatment and its degradation.

At the same time, many fruit juice vendors are dumping their food waste on roads.

The solution of the IIT Dhanbad alumnus is beneficial for both the problems. Saurabh Kumar from IIT founded a startup ToWaSo (TOWArds Solution) for an eco-friendly solution to clean community toilets.

ToWaSo is working with the municipalities under the Swachh Bharat Mission. The startup also provides waste management solutions to companies and housing complexes.

Saurabh along with his team developed a bio-toilet cleaning solution with acetic acid content of citrus fruits like oranges, lemon etc.

They followed the below mentioned process for making a cleaning solution:

ToWaSo collected fruit waste from roadside juice vendors and transported it to an established unit near the municipality.

Ten big plastic drums had been placed. Nine were filled with 200 ml of fruit waste each, and the last one was filled with microbes.

After that, all the nine drums were filled with water and essential microbes. And acetic solution had been produced due to hydrolysis.

Now, this solution has Bio-Enzyme, a good cleaning agent which can be used to clean stinking toilets.

In addition to enough space, the process costs ₹20,000 to establish the unit. It is a one-time investment.

So far, ToWaSo has converted 600 kg of fruit waste into 5,400 litres of eco-friendly toilet cleaning solution.

Image Reference: Thebetterindia