Sunday, August 30, 2009

Urine Nordstrom!

A urinal in a Natick, MA Nordstrom store: perfectly clean and white. Except... what's that? A tiny black dot above the drain?



Closer examination reveals this odd little dot is actually a tiny cartoon bumble bee.



My first thought: OMG! Let's pee on it! Which, apparently, is exactly what is intended. The urinals in Amsterdam airport have had little fly graphics on their urinals for a while now, and many sites on the internet quote a source as saying it has reduced spillage by 80%. (Pity the scientist collecting pee from the floor to measure it.)

These Sloan urinals are also flushless - no clean, fresh drinking water wasted to push your asparagus-smelling excretions to the sewer! The Sloan website explains how they work: a replaceable cartridge and seal allows urine to pass to the sewer but prevents any odor from coming out. It seems to work: these urinals didn't smell like anything at all, and there wasn't a urinal cake in sight.

And they're green! Each urinal saves between 15,000 and 45,000 gallons of water every year.

Check out sloanvalve.com for a fun animation explaining how they work.

Oh, and this whole thing got started when I saw a tie I liked and almost pissed my pants when I saw the Nordstrom price tag: $135.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why aim at the bee when you can go on the Nordstrom floor?

Royal Young said...

or pocket the tie piss on the bee

Anonymous said...

tell us about the tie