Product designer Christoph Behling said, together with Geberit, he was on a mission to improve toilet design because “the 21^st century deserves better”.

Product designer Christoph Behling and MD of Geberit UK Mark Larden

Behling was speaking at Geberit’s 150th anniversary celebrations and launch of  its entry level shower toilet AquaClean Alba, at the company’s UK headquarters in Warwick.

The AquaClean Alba has been designed to make the shower toilet category more accessible to a broader array of consumers.

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Managing director of Geberit UK Mark Larden said the Aquaclean range of shower toilets was usually sold alongside its top-end Aspire range, but the launch of Alba will change that.

“Somebody paying £6,000 for a Mera toilet is not going to, generally, go into a mid-market retailer. But what has broken that is the launch of Alba”, he said.

Mark Larden added: “Alba is clearly more a mass-market product, whereby it is appealing to all levels of consumer. It is just over £1,000 but it’s not £6,000. Alba will be sold across all our channels.”

Speaking about the overall standard of toilet design, Behling said it was “surreal” there had been “hardly” any evolution since the introduction of the first flushing toilet nearly two centuries ago.

He commented: “They still use lots of drinking water to flush. They still smell and they are still a pain to clean.”

Behling continued: “Look at how the car has evolved over the past 200 years,  the Ford T versus any cars today, then look at the toilet; it has not improved.”

Designing for Geberit since 2006, Behling explained he shared a mission with the bathroom manufacturer’s engineering team, to improve WC design because – regardless of shower toilets –  they both believe “the 21^st century deserves better toilets. Full stop.”

He explained the lack of evolution in standard toilet design could be because people were too coy to consider improvements to reduce odour and improve ease of cleaning.

However, Behling said consumers should set expectations for pleasant toilet environments, both individually and collectively, adding “as a society we need to decide particularly on water consumption of the toilet – and how much drinking water do we want to sacrifice?”

Citing a third of personal water consumption in Europe for toilet flushing as “absurd”, Behling urged: “As a society, let’s look at toilets and make them as good as we can.”