Germany might be renowned for its cleanliness and order, but the nation’s toilets seem to tell a different story. In 2023, one study found that half of German school students would rather hold it in than relieve themselves in the school loos. But no more. The first German School Toilet Summit was held this month to tackle the issue.
You're using them for conference seating! Try putting them in public toilets and plumbing them in, dumb Krauts!
To make toilets more appealing to young people, the German Toilet Organization awarded prizes totalling €50,000 (£42,000) to school pupils with the most innovative suggestions for improving the hygiene of public facilities.
You can have that suggestion for free, kinder.
You might scoff at our European neighbours, who have a reputation for speaking plainly about bowel movements, sitting down to wee (even the men) and examining their own “fecal health”, aided by the country’s Flachspüler, or in-shelf toilets. But they’ve got the right idea in getting young people to consider the grossness of public conveniences.
Shared toilets, as anyone online knows, have become a focal point in the culture wars. They show up the most obvious difference between the sexes.
Because the people waging the war don't believe in those differences.
They also, very importantly, show us the divide between the decent upstanding citizens of the world and the absolutely feral miscreants. At a former workplace, a mystery unflushable poo became something of legend, partly because it had been left there, in the unisex loos, with an entire metal fork wedged into it.
Lovely!
...my firm belief is that the higher quality provision we’re given, the better we’ll behave in and around them.
Well, that's an expectation that has yet to run up against reality...
