Public toilets are like lawyers—everyone hates them until they need one. But while it’s easy to find a lawyer, locating a public restroom when nature calls is much more difficult.

According to the Public Toilet Index, a report from the British company QS Supplies and the online toilet-finding tool PeePlace, the US has just eight public toilets per 100,000 people, which leaves it tied with Botswana for 30th in the world ranking. With no relief in sight from local governments, private businesses are being tapped to fill the void.

The startup Throne Labs offers standalone public restrooms with “smart” toilets that use tech to monitor and help maintain the facilities. Users who don’t want to pop into a coffee shop, library, or museum can gain entry to a Throne Labs location through an app. But if you leave the bathroom worse than you found it, you could be banned because your rating falls too low (it’s like Uber for toilets).

And cities are giving Throne Labs restrooms a good rating:

• Urban planners in Los Angeles told the Wall Street Journal that contracting with Throne Labs for 30 locations in the city this year—at a total cost of $2.7 million—is a good deal. They said that’s about what it would cost for the city to place its own bathrooms—but the ones from Throne Labs can be installed overnight.
• Ann Arbor, Michigan, tested 10 Throne Lab bathrooms over the course of a year and decided to keep eight.
• A one-month trial in Detroit just ended with the two Throne Lab models used nearly 3,000 times and maintaining an overall cleanliness rating of 4.52 out of 5.

On the way…with the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics coming to Los Angeles, the city is planning to add 44 more outposts from Throne Labs, in addition to the existing 20 that have been deployed in its Metro system.

It’s not the only company being tapped to meet the urgent need. American Restroom Association co-founder Steven Soifer cited the private company Portland Loo to Bloomberg as an example of public toilets done right. It has branched out from its namesake city and has completed more than 250 installations.—DL

Bidets are on par with punctual trains in the amount of envy they inspire in Americans visiting Japan.

The water-spraying toilets are standard there, thanks to the century-old Japanese toilet manufacturer Toto, which popularized them in the 1980s and ’90s. The company sells both standalone bidets and patented toilets with a bidet feature called a Washlet, which are the iPhones of bathroom fixtures—with features like self-sanitizing capabilities and heated seats that open automatically.

Americans behind

While 80% of Japanese dwellings have a bidet toilet, and a washlet-equipped gas station loo is not a novelty in the country, only 2.5% of American toilets have tush-washing capabilities.

For decades, Toto struggled to promote its hygienic tech in the US due to Americans being wary of its cheeky ads, especially one that drew backlash for featuring bare bottoms. But TP shortages during the pandemic inspired many Americans to consider alternatives, and Toto Washlet sales in North America nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020.

And Toto is still hoping that bidets will catch on like anime:

• Earlier this year, the company told the Japanese publication Nikkei that it planned to triple the number of US showrooms it has to 300 by 2026.
• Last week, Toto opened a $224 million factory in Georgia where it’ll produce 300,000 of its luxury toilets (some possibly without bidets) yearly for North American bathrooms.

Big picture: An industry report last year showed that over 40% of Americans remodeling their homes are installing toilets with special features, including bidet toilet seats. But a Toto might remain a dream for many, as renovations in owner-occupied homes are expected to stall next year, per Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.—SK

The benefits of installing a camera in your toilet bowl might not be immediately apparent, but a startup called Throne (not to be confused with Throne Labs) says “let us explain.”

The company (which counted Morning Brew co-founder Austin Rief among its early investors) recently raised $4 million for its smart camera positioned in a toilet that helps monitor users’ health. The camera is pointed at the contents of the bowl. And it transmits visuals that most people would rather not look at to an AI model that it says can analyze users’ hydration levels, make inferences about gut health, and even detect early signs of disease.

Crowded toilets

Throne’s potty camera, which it aims to start selling next year, will have some competition:

• Wearable tech company Withings is bringing the U-Scan home urine analyzer to markets around the world. It’s an in-toilet device that tests urine for certain biomarkers, like ketone and Vitamin C levels, and then uses the results to provide nutritional advice.
• Toi Labs, backed by the National Institutes of Health and Toto, is selling the TrueLoo toilet seat, which also uses imaging to scan feces and urine for health clues, for $350. The device, which CEO Vik Kashyap likens to “a team of doctors that can peer into your toilet bowl every day,” is already installed in 50 senior living facilities.

It’s an opportune time…for bathroom-based tracking devices, as gastrointestinal disease is becoming more prevalent. But the companies involved have all had to address privacy concerns associated with data collection.—SK

There’s one side hustle that can literally take you from the outhouse to the penthouse.

Portable toilets were a $2.8 billion-per-year market in 2024. The industry took a hit during the pandemic, with large gatherings banned and many outdoor events canceled to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. But Grand View Research projects the US-based portable toilet market will exceed $5 billion by 2030.

Now that you’ve been seduced by the massive profit potential, here are the economics of launching that side hustle.

Getting started:

• A standard portable toilet can run between $700 and $2,000. Cleaning supplies (yes, some are cleaned) cost an additional $50 to $200 per month.
• Insuring the equipment can be as much as $5,000 per year.
• Depending on your location, the cost to store the units while not in use is between $500 and $2,000 per month.

Bottom line: Of course, the numbers will vary depending on the size of your business and customer base, and your location, but portable toilet business owners tend to make between $30,000 and $100,000 per year, although some can earn up to seven figures.—DL

We won’t help you plunge your toilet, but we will gift you the type of knowledge that makes everyone else go, “Buddy, why do you know that?” Some flush-adjacent facts to remember the next time you’re looking for a conversation starter in the bathroom line:

The NBA stadium with the most toilets: To cut down restroom wait times, the new Intuit Dome, home to the Los Angeles Clippers, boasts 1,100+ toilets and urinals—triple the league average, according to Clippers owner Steve Ballmer—giving it a people-to-potties ratio of roughly 16:1. “I’ve become a real obsessive about toilets,” Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, said when construction began.

First film to feature a flush: At the beginning of Psycho (1960), right before the doomed motel guest gets in the shower, there’s a close-up of swirling toilet water as she flushes incriminating evidence down the latrine. It was the first time a film focused on a toilet flush, though not the first time a toilet appeared on screen—that happened 30 years prior in a comedy called Going Wild.

Billionaire with a toilet mission: The Gates Foundation has spent at least $1.4 billion since 2005 on initiatives to “reinvent” the toilet and expand access to safe sanitation. To spread awareness, Bill Gates had Jimmy Fallon drink water recycled from human waste (and sanitized with a device the foundation helped fund, known as the Omniprocessor) alongside him on The Tonight Show in 2015.

The golden toilet heist of 2019: An 18-karat gold, fully functional commode that was initially displayed at the Guggenheim was pried from the floor of a UK palace a few years ago and likely sold for parts. One of three thieves, who were convicted this year, reportedly said it was “splendid” using the $6 million toilet while casing the joint before the heist.

All the household items dirtier than the loo: The MythBusters guys swabbed a bunch of everyday objects and found that a cellphone, a computer keyboard, a light switch, paper money, and a kitchen sponge (the worst offender) all had more bacteria than the top of a toilet seat. But some toilet-seat comparisons are a myth—Snopes couldn’t find a study backing up the long-running rumor that cellphones are 10 times dirtier than toilet seats.—ML