Toilet Paper Nation!

Checking out the plumbing and such.

American taste for soft toilet roll 'worse than driving Hummers'
Extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply toilet roll made from virgin forest causes more damage than gas-guzzlers, fast food or McMansions, say campaigners

Flush Your Turbine Toilet!

What if every time that you flushed your toilet you could generate just a little bit of power? That is the idea behind the Benkatine Turbine by Leviathan Energy, which aims to get power from any pipe that water rushes through. So not only could you install this within a municipal system, but according to the company, you could get power from the water rushing down your gutter drains!
More: POOPTRICITY: Want Electricity? Flush Your Turbine Toilet!

Japan pooh-poohs China's Olympic crappers

japanese toilet by ~Ookami16

Japanese are rightfully proud of their toilet engineering feats, and Shukan Asahi (2/29) takes a high-handed approach to dump on neighboring China about the standard of its restrooms at facilities to be used in this summer's Beijing Olympic Games.

While Beijing has been widely blessed for the excellence of its newly opened National Swimming Center, where the Games' aquatic events will be held, not everything about the stadium is as world-class as its pools.

Nearly every toilet in the center is a squat style, not the sit-down type of loo most Westerners -- and Japanese -- are accustomed to.

Squat toilets are the dominant style nearly everywhere throughout China. And though individual cubicles have become the norm on trains and public toilets in smaller cities, doors on the cubicles are still a rarity.

"There are growing numbers of Western-style toilets in southern China," a Shanghai-born Olympic facility worker tells Shukan Asahi. "I guess squat-style toilets are still the norm up north."

Toilet paper is also posing a problem. Outside of classy hotels in the big cities, most toilet paper used in China is a rough, harsh type that doesn't dissolve well in water, the weekly says. To avoid blockage, it's more common to dump the dirty paper into a trash can instead of the cistern. And though most Chinese are well aware of this practice, there are no notices anywhere informing visitors to the country of the proper way to prime the potty, running the risk of clogging the crapper. It's a point the Games' organizers concede.

"We have to put up signs," an organizer says.

Some Japanese have already noticed the poor toilet situation facing those attending -- and taking part in -- the biggest sporting event on earth. Eiichi Kawaniwa, honorary vice-chairman of the International Tennis Federation, has already blasted the crap out of organizers over the toilet situation.

"If you've built a world-class tennis center, it should have Western-style toilets," he told the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee while asking for improvements at the stadium where the tennis competition will be held.

At the tennis center, there is only one Western-style toilet in every block of public conveniences, the rest being squat-style. The cubicles are also cramped and have steps, rendering them unusable for those in wheelchairs. Organizers have promised to fix the situation by April, just four months before the Opening Ceremony.

Kawaniwa says he experienced no problems with blockages during test-run events at Olympic sites and does not foresee it becoming an issue.

"If paper didn't flow through the toilets properly, it would become a massive problem within the International Olympic Committee," the tennis official tells Shukan Asahi, before adding undiplomatically: "They'll get it right, even if it is China we're talking about." (By Ryann Connell)

Mainichi Daily News

For toilet museum, a final flush is avoided

early toilet paper

Watertown soon to house cache

WORCESTER - If there was ever a man who could appreciate a good toilet, it is Russell Manoog.

more stories like thisHe has dedicated the last 20 years to collecting toilets, as well as sinks and other accoutrements of indoor plumbing, the way other men collect golf shirts, trophy wives, or fine cars.

The result is the American Sanitary Plumbing Museum, a roadside oddity in Worcester known to many as simply the "toilet museum" and a historic showcase of the way we used to live, wash, bathe, and, of course, relieve ourselves.

But now - for Worcester, anyway - it's all circling the drain. With Manoog, 73, and his wife, Bettejane, 72, looking to do a little more traveling and a little less talking about toilets, they are closing their Worcester location in March, moving the museum to Watertown shortly thereafter, and relinquishing some control over their vast collection of porcelain, brass, and cast-iron artifacts.

"We're sad, of course," Bettejane Manoog said yesterday.

But the Manoogs didn't expect others to be sad, too. After all, only about 400 people checked out the facilities last year. As news of the move reached locals in Worcester yesterday, however, they scram bled to visit the museum, proving yet again the powerful hold that the toilet has on the human brain. When faced with the thought of not having a toilet - or in this case, a toilet museum - nearby, we find ourselves feeling the urge to, you know, go.

"Bathrooms were something that people didn't talk about 100 or 200 years ago," said Russell Manoog yesterday, smoking a pipe in a room filled with toilets. "The outhouse was out there, and it was there to serve a need, a physical need.

But today the bathroom in modern homes is probably the most, or second most, expensive part of your home. So instead of hiding it in the back of the house, it's right in front. . . . It has gained a prominence."

Charles Manoog, Russell's father, founded the family's wholesale plumbing supply business in 1927. His son, who graduated from Harvard University in 1956, ultimately returned home to join him. And together they ran the business until his father retired in 1979.

As a parting gift, Charles Manoog received a segment of wooden pipes that had linked Jamaica Pond to Quincy Market in Boston in the late 1600s - a rare treasure. And from there, the collection grew until finally, in 1988, the American Sanitary Plumbing Museum was born, quickly becoming a quirky claim to fame in Worcester, along with the yellow "smiley face" invented in 1963 by a local designer.

"It's really something that's kind of a conversation starter when you say you're the home of the plumbing museum - home of the smiley face and the plumbing museum," said Jeannie Hebert, the tourism and marketing director for the Central Massachusetts Convention and Visitors Bureau, "It's really something that's kind of endearing to all of us."

People came to see the "earth closet," circa 1860, a primitive contraption that used soil, not water. They came to see the "cast iron pan closet," circa 1830, which, lacking an effective way to clean the pan itself, was one of the earliest and least sanitary receptacles. And they came to see the other treasures as well: the first dishwasher, called the "Electric Sink"; an elaborate, decorative toilet from the late 19th century; and the Manoogs' vast collection of pipes.

Now it is all bound for Watertown, where it will be reassembled and reopened for the public in April or May at the offices of J.C. Cannistraro LLC, a large mechanical contracting company that employs 400 people.

Inevitably, some jokes will follow, concedes Hugh Kelleher, executive director of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association of Greater Boston. Anytime you're dealing with plumbing, Kelleher admits, the humor always offers "a sort of scatological angle."

But Kelleher, who's going to be a trustee of the new museum along with the Manoogs, said people need to remember one thing before cracking jokes about indoor plumbing.

"If those systems go down, civilization rapidly deteriorates," he said. "The day water stops coming out of the tap is the day civilization starts to crumble."

short hopper on standard

American Sanitary Plumbing Museum Set