THE AUTHORING AUCTIONEER

Would you put a porta-potty inside your home?  I certainly wouldn’t.  Call me unreasonable, but when I have finished my business in the bathroom, I take great comfort in the ability to flush it away.  However, were it a hundred years ago, and I did not have indoor plumbing, I would have an outhouse in my back yard.  Inconvenient perhaps, but necessary.  Even our primitive ancestors from a century ago, who had no Internet, no cell phones, and no television, understood the need for keeping human waste away from their living quarters.  Why, then, would a brand new, multi-million-dollar facility employ the modern equivalent of an outhouse inside its men’s room?

Those of you who travel the Northeast Extension of the PA Turnpike, know that the Allentown Rest Area had been shut down for quite some time.  The old facility was razed and a new one erected in its place.  My father, my brother, and I stopped at the new facility on our way to the Quakertown area last week.  We were impressed, despite the eating area looking like a school cafeteria.  I did a straight line for the men’s room.

I thought the urinals looked strange when I entered, but Nature forced me to conduct my investigation while using one.  It had no flush handle.  This I have become used to, as many restrooms use automatic flushing units, but the drain was covered with some kind of circular cap and there were no water pipes on top of the unit.  No.  Instead of plumbing, there was a tag that read, “Sloan Waterfree.  This facility is committed to protecting and preserving our environment.  By using this touch-free, completely hygenic Sloan Waterfree system, you are helping the environment to conserve an average of 40,000 gallons of fresh water per urinal, per year.”

You can get the full story about how these non-flushing urinals work by clicking here, but I’m going to explain it in a nutshell:  The urinal is still hooked up to a drain.  The main component is the plastic cartridge… Yes, that circular cap I saw where the drain hole should have been is the top of a cylindrical plastic cartridge that “is designed to collect uric sediment. The remaining liquid, which is non-corrosive and free of hard water, is allowed to flow into the drainage pipe.”

Sloan claims that the liquid sealant used when installing the cartridge prevents odors from escaping into the restroom.  I don’t know.  In the men’s room in Allentown, I still smelled pee.  Maybe that’s because, in one of the urinals, the cartridge had given up on its filtering duty and caused a back up.  Well, these miracle cartridges are only good for 7,000 urinations, after which they must be replaced.  Ah, but what, you ask, happens to these used cylinders that are filled with the “uric sediment” of 7,000 number ones?

According to Sloan, the EPA does not classify these spent cartridges as hazardous waste, and may therefore be thrown away in regular trash or recycled.  I’m sorry, but I would not want to be the guy at the recycling plant who’s in charge of receiving and processing loads of pee cans.

But what are we really saving here?  Instead of using water to flush the urine away into a sewage treatment plant, we are filling up plastic cans that will either add to the contents of a landfill or be brought to a recycling plant that will expend electricity and other forms of energy to remake them into what?  Chapstick applicators?  Yuck!

Take notice, my fellow humans.  See the hypocrisy and the absurdity.  Sloan Waterfree urinals are nothing more than another money-making scheme, designed to play on our guilt over “ruining the environment.”  (Call up Al Gore and ask him if he has one in his bathroom.)  This is the same guilt the media stuffs down our throats and prevents us from drilling for oil in Alaska.  This is the same hypocrisy that fights the construction of windmills for electricity.  Well, let’s see how much we love the caribou when gasoline is $10 a gallon.  Let’s see how many birds we’ll allow to be killed when rolling blackouts are a daily occurrence.

So let’s borrow a powerful moment from the classic movie Network.  When you’re finished reading this article, I want you to go to the nearest bathroom, be it your own or a public restroom.  Stand in front of the toilet and yell at the top of your lungs, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”  Then, flush three times.

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