Word: toileting
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...even greater luxury was the thoughtfully pre-warmed toilet seat. Then came a disturbing discovery: Even though the other stalls were occupied, mine was the only one from which pee sounds were audible. All around me, I heard a great Zen-like steam of rushing water, but nary a human tinkle. I stopped mid-stream, overtaken by a sudden case of lavatory fright. In the land of toilets so fancy they sport buttons that manufacture artificial "flushing sounds," I had apparently committed a serious bathroom faux...
...country and culture that we don't take responsibility, individually or collectively, for having clean facilities for people to use," says Steven Soifer, a professor of social work at the University of Maryland and a co-founder of the ARA. Soifer contends that the first step to improving our toilet deficit is to start a national potty discourse: "Ninety-eight percent of Americans don't know the laws regarding the use of public toilets and 80% of businesses do not know," he says...
Indeed, in some communities the call of nature has become a call to arms. When the Ballard neighborhood council in Seattle rejected the installation of an automated self-cleaning toilet in its major intersection in 2002 on the grounds that it would be an eyesore, a community-based walking group called Feet First stepped into action. The group produced a "pit-stop" map of local, independently owned coffee shops that would happily welcome the additional pedestrian traffic a public toilet could draw. The Seattle toilet project, however, was ultimately scrapped...
According to Prof. Katherine Anthony, a restroom expert at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the U.S. has a history of toilet-based discrimination. She says this country's lack of potty parity - equal speed of access to public restrooms - reinforces an unspoken social hierarchy. Men spend an average 30 seconds using the toilet, and women take an average of 90 seconds; most of us are intimately familiar with the waiting lines that form outside women's restrooms...
When members of the WTO meet for the World Toilet Summit later this fall in New Delhi, India, delegates will learn about the best global toilet practices, from developments in eco-sanitation to the latest offerings from the Restroom Specialist Training Course at the World Toilet College in Singapore, the only program in the world that teaches toilet design, maintenance and hygiene. Such topics may elicit the public's distaste, but that makes WTO president Jack Sim all the more adamant that his organization is necessary. "People go [to the bathroom] six times a day, yet they can't talk...