The European cities with the worst public toilets

Warsaw has the seventh worst public toilets in Europe

Warsaw, Poland, is the European city with the seventh worst public toilets, with 6.52% of reviews containing words synonymous with ‘dirty’, and an overall cleanliness score of 1.88/5. This is a significant improvement over its neighbour, Berlin, which was crowned as the city with the worst public toilets in Europe.

The European cities with the worst public toilets

Shower Enclosure Experts can reveal that Berlin, Germany, is the European city with the worst public toilets, with a cleanliness score of 0.16/5. With almost one in 10 (9.58%) of its public toilet reviews including words synonymous with ‘dirty’, Berlin’s cleanliness score is half that of London’s (0.32/5).

With a cleanliness score of 0.32/5 and one in 12 (8.25%) reviews containing words synonymous with ‘dirty’, London’s public toilets are the second worst in Europe, beaten only by Berlin (0.16/5). This score indicates that London’s toilets are twice as dirty as those of Athens, Greece (0.63/5) and almost nine times dirtier than Budapest’s public toilets (2.82/5).

With a cleanliness score of 0.63/5, Athens, Greece is found to have the third worst public toilets in Europe, as well as having the highest percentage of reviews with a tenth (10.91%) insinuating that their public toilets are ‘dirty’. In comparison, nearby Istanbul, Turkey, keeps a comparatively high score of 3.91/5, and just 4.62% of reviews reference grime.

In fourth place is Tallinn, Estonia, with a cleanliness rating of 0.78/5, and a contrasting 2.13% of relevant reviews. Following closely in fifth place is Lisbon, Portugal, which has a 5.17% increase on Tallinn, with 7.3% of ‘dirty’-associated reviews. And, with a cleanliness score of just 0.94/5, Lisbon still doesn’t quite hit the one-star mark.

Helsinki has the cleanest public toilets in Europe

Helsinki is the European city with the cleanest public toilets with a cleanliness score of 4.85/5, and just 2.15% of reviews mentioning words that are synonymous with the word ‘dirty’. In comparison, Helsinki’s Scandinavian neighbour Copenhagen fares less favourably, with a cleanliness score of 3.28/5.

The full data set, as well as accompanying graphics and images for editorial use can be found here.

If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch.

All the best,

Sarah Hallam | sarah@journalistic.org

Methodology:

1. Shower Enclosure Experts conducted an analysis of 8,000 reviews of public toilets on google maps to identify the European cities with the  most unhygienic public toilets.
2. Firstly, a dataset containing a sample of over 1,000 public toilets and 8,000 text reviews was acquired from google maps for each major city in europe. The search term “[city] public toilets” was used to generate search results.
3. An aggregation was subsequently performed to calculate for each city, the average toilet rating, total number of reviews and also the percentage of reviews containing keywords synonymous with ‘dirty’ .
4. A normalised bayesian average was then calculated to rank each city by taking into account not only the average review rating, but also the number of reviews given, thus resulting in a more accurate ranking system.
5. The final results were then presented in descending order of the normalised bayesian average score (out of 5) with the percentage of reviews containing keywords synonymous with ‘dirty’ as additional information.