Is the world ready for the waterless urinal?

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/06/ff_waterless_urinal/

by TrevorBurnham • 16 years ago

89 82 16 years ago

Normally I wouldn't post something about urinals to HN just because it's in Wired, but this is actually a fascinating article about a new technology's introduction being delayed by resistance from trade unions (in this case, plumbers).

_delirium2• 16 years ago

Although I thought the insistence on running pipes was a waste, it turned out at my university to be a good thing they installed the pipes (capped off initially) even though they were installing waterfree urinals, because after they kept clogging up and cost way more in maintenance costs than they were saving in water, they switched back to low-flush urinals. If they hadn't run the capped-off pipes initially, they would've been stuck.

warfangle• 16 years ago

It seems as though if they're properly (and regularly) maintained, they don't clog. Sounds like your university's periodic (compared to acute - think janitor) maintenance workers were improperly trained on how to care for them. The second page of the article explains this.

(edit: on second thought, it was a university. Knowing what university students tend to put in urinals, I'm not surprised they clogged even with proper maintenance)

dtf• 16 years ago

It's not just the trade unions. Here's a quote from a similar story in the Washington Post:

"Users complain that high-efficiency toilets, which use less water than traditional models, require two flushes to do the job. Behind such objections stands this truth: America remains a flush-oriented society, and the more powerful the flush, the better. "It was a morale issue," Anja S. Caldwell, green building chief for the Montgomery County public school system, said of initial resistance to the 50 waterless urinals introduced over the past year. "People thought that by taking the flush away, you're taking an entitlement."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06...

SoftwareMaven2• 16 years ago

If that's what people think, then by all means, get all flushing urinals out of our society.

I would readily give the gallon of water from my urinal to my "standard" toilet flush for when I need it.

   ___
  [   ]
   ---
   (@)
    -

agentultra• 16 years ago

Been happening with coal since the introduction of nuclear power.

The anti-nuclear/anti-weaponization movement didn't help either.

Great article. Just goes to show that there's still so much more to innovate out there.

EliAndrewC• 16 years ago

I'd say that this is especially relevant to hackers in corporate environments because of this passage:

"Hansen heard a flood of complaints early on: The urinals stank. They were dirty. Where was the flush handle? In one building, the complaints were so vociferous that Hansen started an investigation. He found that the bathrooms did indeed stink, but the urinals appeared clean ....

... The urinals, however, emitted nothing. The cartridges were doing their job. Hansen moved the sewer vent and replaced the cracked toilet. The complaints stopped. Hansen concluded that the smell had always been there, but people didn’t have anything to blame it on until the new urinals arrived."

I've experienced this many times. I create/modify/install PROGRAM_X and immediately receive complaints that it's causing problems on the server where it's running. Investigation eventually reveals that these problems have been going on for some time, but now there's something to blame. I'm sure I'm not alone.

pinko• 16 years ago

I remember when these were deployed in Terminal G at O'Hare a few years back, with lots of signage hoopla in the bathroom about it. Then they disappeared with no public explanation. Interesting to hear the reason was pipe clogs.

Given that they did cause clogs, I'm not sure I think the plumbers' skepticism is as unreasonable or necessarily self-interested as the OP implies.

jws• 16 years ago

Chicago City Hall and O’Hare International Airport have also removed their waterless urinals, citing clogged pipes.

Apparently that design calls for hot water to be dumped down the urinal when the cartridge is changed to control an oily substance that builds up in pipes. The speculation is that not all janitorial staffs embrace this extra task.

mturmon• 16 years ago

There's a lot of them (dozens) at various office buildings where I work. They're good for an office setting, where people get used to the quirks, which are mainly: nothing but urine in the urinal (in particular, no saliva, which can clog the one-way-flow mechanism). At an airport, it would be asking for trouble.

tjr• 16 years ago

We have them in the building I work in. People seem to fairly routinely continue to spit into them, which frankly, I don't understand at all. Maybe my physical makeup is just different, but I don't feel a pressing need to spit throughout the day, and if I did, it would almost certainly not occur to me to spit into a urinal, waterless or otherwise.

rdl• 16 years ago

People who smoke (or use chewing tobacco) are much more likely to spit.

tghw• 16 years ago

I've seen them all over public places in Colorado, including airports (Durango for sure, and I think Denver, too) and ski resorts. I'm guessing it's something about building/plumbing codes there. I've never seen (or smelled) and problem with them.

khafra• 16 years ago

The theatre at MCBH Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii had them over a decade ago; I never noticed any problems.

viggity• 16 years ago

I totally understand this in southwest states like Arizona and New Mexico, where water conservation is really important. But the bulk of the country essentially has infinite, cheap water. It doesn't make sense to me why you would need this in Iowa.

thefool• 16 years ago

Even where you have a lot of cheap water, sewage still has to be proccessed.

Tichy2• 16 years ago

What happens to the cardriges?

kscaldef2• 16 years ago

Many cities in the US are having serious issues with their sewer infrastructure, so even if they have copious fresh water, dealing with it after use is an issue. Here in Portland, where we have no shortage of water, I still pay more for my water than for any other utility, mostly to fund upgrades to the sewers.

ddelony• 16 years ago

Bucky Fuller invented one in the '40s.

mhd4• 16 years ago

It didn't quite surprise me that this was based on one German engineer's ideas. We're really crazy about our toilets. (Ever seen the fabled "poo shelf"?)

noonespecial2• 16 years ago

Yes! In all the years I spent in Germany, no one was able to adequately explain to me the reasoning behind the "poo shelf". It was the biggest WTF about my whole Deutsch experience.

It seemed like someone sat down and said to himself, "now how can I make this toilet worse? I know!"

travem• 16 years ago

I thought it was intended to make it easier to inspect for worms which, due to the diet, were more common in Germany.

billswift2• 16 years ago

Germans seem to be noted for over-engineering in general. Sometimes it works, Mecedes-Benz, but often it just results in a lot of unnecessary cruft.

mkramlich• 16 years ago

Attempting to innovate is always good.

petercooper• 16 years ago

The world might not be, but the United Kingdom seems to be. I've seen a few of these over the last year. I must admit, it didn't stand out as anything particularly revolutionary or interesting at the time, but I guess it must be.

sqrt17• 16 years ago

Agreed. Where I went to college (Germany), they also had waterless urinals. The biggest problem seemed to be that people would throw cigarettes and stuff into them.

jufemaiz2• 16 years ago

One of the biggest problems for sewerage systems in general is people putting things down there that aren't meant to be there.

pmjordan• 16 years ago

They have waterless urinals at most of the motorway service stations in Germany. They seem to work well, but then they're kept spotless, probably to justify charging 50 cents to use them.

Ikea (in Austria at least) use them too; they're not kept as spotless, and I've seen them out of order occasionally.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

In general nearly all the public toilets in Germany are kept spotless, whether they are urinals or not, and you generally have to pay 50 cents to use them (or 20 cents, if you are not on the autobahn).

Compared to the alternative of gross toilets it is a win-win situation.

nrj• 16 years ago

They have these in the Adobe offices. They are all about being "green". Anyways, something never set quite right with me about them... something about the piss just sitting there, not being washed away. Not that regular urinals are clean either.

jaxn• 16 years ago

They have these at the Owen Business School at Vanderbilt University. They stink.

Literally.

They smell like urine. If we are going to use these on a wide scale then I think that men need to drink the water that is saved so that they have less pungent smelling piss.

billswift2• 16 years ago

The problem with that solution (dilution) is that then we would have to spend more time going.

SolarUpNote• 16 years ago

I laughed a little when I read that they reached a compromise with the plumbers by continuing to require the plumbing to be in the walls (in case they want to switch to standard urinals).

Smart compromise - not wasting water, and the plumbers keep their jobs.

ricree• 16 years ago

Since they're running pipes anyways, I wonder whether it would be better to have a urinal that auto flushes itself once a day or so. The water savings would probably be comparable to a plain no-flush, but it seems like it might save some of the maintenance issues the article talks about.

MartinCron• 16 years ago

I was thinking the same thing, if you give up the idealistic goal of "no water usage at all" you can possibly find a compromise of "very close to no water usage".

SoftwareMaven2• 16 years ago

And consumers get screwed. People doing the building should have the option and should get to choose themselves.

nooneelse• 16 years ago

And they should have the choice to go with cheaper electrical wire too? Get to choose what kind of materials to use for load bearing beams? No, building codes are not just for the owner/builder's benefit. There are community interests at play when someone is putting in a structure. Usually there are also lender interests at play; i.e. if the owner/builder defaults on the loan used to build, the bank wants to have something that is dependably going to sell.

Sure it can slow down innovation some, but this kind of oversight is definitely needed. Once that is admitted, it is just a discussion of where exactly to draw the line. There was a disagreement in those discussions, so a compromise was used. It gets reviewed regularly and the line can shift as needed when more information is available or the opinions in the disagreement change.

Devilboy• 16 years ago

We have these in our office building too. They're fine but our building management has them cleaned twice a day, otherwise they stink up the place.

jufemaiz2• 16 years ago

Australia's also using them in a lot of places. No problems here to date.

But then, we've been conservative about water for a while with good reason to be.

Tichy2• 16 years ago

Why the cartridges, wouldn't it be easier to drain the urine down a pipe? Is processing of the cartridges waterless?

kscaldef2• 16 years ago

The cartridge replaces a traditional trap, as the diagrams on the second page explain. If you just have a straight pipe, sewer gases come out, which you really don't want.

As far as I know, there is no "processing" of the cartridges; they are just thrown out after they reach the end of their lifespan.

crististm3• 16 years ago

So instead of more water down the drain you fill the dumpster with the cartridge... which you then recycle, of course.

10ren• 16 years ago

> The US Army Corp of Engineers took notice and mandated in 2006 that the Army install only waterless urinals from 2010 onward.

That's what an ROI can do for you!

It's important to find the particular customers who can benefit from your product, and have the power to act. Usually, the military is a hard market - but in this case, their control of their own facilities helped.

Changing community attitudes - such as towards water usage - can benefit or harm you. Here, the long-term trend was predictable (and predicted). Skate to where the puck is going to be.

This whole saga was purely adoption (ie marketing). The product was already done.

They didn't give up.

ratsbane• 16 years ago

An office building I used to work in tried this a few years ago. Within a few months they replaced them with flush urinals because the men's room was starting to smell like downtown San Francisco. Oddly enough, when I was in SF last month I noted that the outdoor smell of stale urine has largely been replaced by the smell of burning marijuana. It really is an improvement.

someperson• 16 years ago

I've heard urine is sterile, the smell occurs because of bacteria that grows after it has been passed.

The urinal cake in waterless urinals (and you'd think even in the flushing variety) kill the odour causing bacteria and should stop any odours.

I'm mot sure if this is true though.

jkahn2• 16 years ago

The urinal cakes do kill the smell.

encoderer• 16 years ago

Agree that urinal cakes are the answer -- isn't the smell just chemical? Ammonia, etc?

We have these at the office space my employer just built-out. Does have a slight stale-urine smell all the time.

jemfinch• 16 years ago

Only if I can use the "pee on the inside edge" trick to prevent splashback.

eru4• 16 years ago

Obligatory reference for our female geeks: "The Princess and the Pee" (http://www.ampnet.co.uk/femorabilia/pee_standing.html).

stcredzero• 16 years ago

They had these at the national parks in the desert parts of Colorado and Utah. They do seem to smell like urine. I think a part of it is that the background mildew/mustiness is gone from the environment, so one notices the urine smell more. Also, nothing is washing the urine down the drain anymore except for more urine, so there is more smell of dry urine on the urinals themselves.

If I do ever build my desert getaway, I'll be putting in Clivus Multrum composting units and not one of these.

michaelneale• 16 years ago

In Australian buildings this is already very very common. In the recent drought many urinals were converted (temporarily) but some are now back to water.

When maintained it is ok, but it does smell more. Generally not popular.

eston2• 16 years ago

One of my last undergraduate reports as an economics student at the University of Michigan in 2007 was on the "true cost" of watered urinals vs. waterless urinals for the campus. The waterless ones were primarily used in the Dana (Environmental Sciences) building, which even had expensive composting toilets- basically large, windy abysses which you defecated into.

We spent nearly a month doing research on vendors for waterless urinals as well as attempting to model the cost of negative externalities from the water use (sewer system upgrades, water treatment) and the waterless ones (manufacturing and disposal of cartridges, smell and hygiene.)

Whilst I can't locate a PDF of the report anymore, the evidence came out overwhelmingly in favour of the watered urinals. The cost of the waterless filters and hardware, even if all of the waterless urinals were installed new, was still over 2x the cost of running watered urinals at the University, externalities included (I think it was nearly 6x IIRC.)

I can't imagine these being useful for many municipalities – including the more water-scarce ones — unless costs have really dropped.

nostromo2• 16 years ago

I think the cost they are trying to solve for is the environmental cost, not the cost in dollars.

eston2• 16 years ago

Three things:

1. There are a bunch of environmental costs that still make them largely impractical:

- the environmental cost of making the filters (plastic injection molding, etc.) - the environmental cost of disposing of the filters - the environmental cost of waste produced by installing new waterless urinals in place of the old watered ones

These costs are surprisingly high for something trying to be "green". You can model these positive externalities as such in a "dollar amount" by taking into account things such as offset taxes toward pollution (from manufacturing,) costs of disposal over the decomposition life of the object, etc.

2. Unfortunately, the environmental cost is almost never the one that wins in any real-world scenario unless the personal utility of the person owning said waterless urinal is greater than the cost of running the watered one — i.e., the person that installed the waterless urinal enjoys the waterless one enough to compensate for the extra costs involved in running it over a watered one. They are more expensive right now, and will be for quite some time if we're talking about replacing the watered ones with waterless ones. Dollars are the bottom line, especially when negative externalities are not offset in the costs of the watered product.

3. I'm a general skeptic of many of these types of green things due to #2 - it's the "Prius syndrome" in effect. Many of these types of things have little real-world environmental impact when the full cost of ownership is taken into account. Once you add up all of the costs involved:

(manufacturing costs of old watered urinal) + (disposal costs of old watered urinal) + (opportunity cost of purchasing waterless urinal and installing waterless urinal) + (cost of new waterless urinal) + (cost of filters) * ((uses / single filter life) * (life of waterless urinal product))

When all is said and done, the overall real cost - even environmentally - of many of these "green" products ends up being far greater than just using the old product. People don't buy many of these types of things for anything other than their own psychological benefit of feeling greener, such as is the case with the Prius - I read somewhere if you actually wanted to maximise for environmental cost, you'd buy a used Toyota Echo.

jkahn2• 16 years ago

Waterless urinals are everywhere in Australia. Although water is a much more precious resource in this big brown country than most other western nations.

jhuckestein• 16 years ago

Is the world ready for the first wireless urinal?

crististm3• 16 years ago

Never underestimate maintenance costs.

The traditional urinals have at least the advantage of self-maintenance. You flush them - they clean-up. If you don't flush, someone eventually will. You don't need someone to look them over or replace the liquid sealant for at least three reasons I can think of right now.

It's similar to what you get when you replace intersection lights with LED to save _electricity_. They don't get hot. In the winter they get covered with ice and snow enough to not see them. You then go and clean them yourself and realize that what you saved on electricity doesn't even match the cost of gas and labor you used. Or you don't clean them and you have one or more collisions and you're still no better.

How much water you say you save? It is peanuts compared to the water on the toilets...

shard• 16 years ago

Re: Intersection lights: So for cities with snow issues, heaters may need to be installed for the heavy snow days, which will add to the cost but may still yield long term savings. And for all other cities, it should be a fine proposition.

It's okay, they released early, they can release often. Bugs will get sorted out as user comments pour in.

edanm• 16 years ago

I'm always surprised when visiting the United States that there's a lot more water in every toilet than over here (Israel). One of those small things you never think about, but when you visit another country you discover there are other standards.

nostromo2• 16 years ago

As an American that has spent time in Israel, I have to say that the bowl may be more empty, but the amount of water used to flush is quite a bit more.

In commercial toilets in the US you commonly get the pressurized toilets that use a significant amount of air to flush, not just water. This cuts way down on the amount of water used.

However, I do like the "little flush / big flush" buttons you see in Israel and other places.

wolfhumble• 16 years ago

"Falcon recommends pouring a bucket of hot water into its urinals to flush out deposits before putting in a new cartridge." (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/06/ff_waterless_urinal/2/)

Maybe it would make sense to make a hybrid version option that flushes with water every x days. Attacks the idea of pure "waterless", but maybe more practical?

vl• 16 years ago

No, world is not ready. I worked in the building with such urinals and they stink. (And believe me, there is no need for smoke bomb to smell where the stink comes from)

ErrantX• 16 years ago

Those units have been in operation since 2004. So far, there have been no urinal-related deaths.

Quote of the day. :)

Is the world ready for the waterless urinal?

Related Stories