Photo: Dan Forbes
In a laboratory 10 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, a mechanical penis sputters to life. A technician starts a timer as a stream of water erupts from the apparatus’s brass tip, arcing into a urinal mounted exactly 12 inches away. James Krug smiles. His latest back-splatter experiment is under way.
After that opening, surely you'll want to read the rest of Joshua Davis' wonderful article in Wired magazine, on the technological, social, institutional, political, and environmental ramifications of urinals. Eye-opening stuff about an everyday piece of technology that you probably never think about even as you are quite literally pissing in it. While trying to minimize that back-splatter.
Of course, this applies mainly to us guys, so the waterless urinal only solves half the world's water-wasting problem. Perhaps even less than that, because ladies' rooms don't have urinals and they are likely wasting (for all I know) a larger tankful per flush on a regular toilet - so are there plans to extend these waterless technologies across that gender gap, I wonder?
After all, as my friend Susannah Lerman reminds me (through pictures she just posted on facebook from her recent trip to the middle east), it is possible to have waterless WCs as well:
Pic ©Susannah Lerman
Actually, the company I work for has had waterless urinals in all our offices across the UK for several years. Head office in New York doesn't though...
Of course, I should point out that I'm not trying to start a pissing contest.
And of course, see http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/09/02/urinal-protocol-vulnerability/ for a thorough analysis of efficient urinal packing from xkcd.
Work has waterless urinals. These seems to be a major backward step, as large amounts of chemical cleaners are dumped into them regularly, and they clog with urea crystals every few months.
Seems much worse than a few litres of water a day...Of course greywater from the roof would be better.
Work has waterless urinals. These seems to be a major backward step, as large amounts of chemical cleaners are dumped into them regularly, and they clog with urea crystals every few months.
Seems much worse than a few litres of water a day...Of course greywater from the roof would be better.
Thanks. statto - I had not seen that xkcd analysis of urinal packing - most thorough!
And yes Kincaid, I wonder about the total environmental costs of the chemical, plastic, and other fossil fuel derivatives that may go into those waterless urinals. Greywater would be better, but given that many parts of the world have a water shortage, and public health issues, so waterless technologies should work better. That said, I also found it interesting from the article that in the US, some of the eastern states caught on to the waterless tech sooner than the much drier western states.
To be honest I particularly take great care of saving water whenever I used flush at work or I do in public places. I don't want to waste it intentionally but I think having water-free urinals would require cleaning every hour and just don't clog it up as it would leave the previous person's waste in there.
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