Let us hope proposals to harmonise toilet flushing across the EU are not bog standard, writes Dick Skellington.
A few years back, in order to conserve water, I placed a house brick in my cistern. This ensured I needed less water to flush. Now I find the EU want to adopt something similar across the Continent.
The EU hopes to standardise flushing with the intention of producing manufactured plumbing systems which deliver one-litre flushes for urinals and five-litre flushes for toilets – three litres will be permitted for half a flush. UKIP politicians predictably condemned this 'preposterous waste of money' (only £72,000) spent on 'latrine etiquette'. Indeed their spokesman went further, according to the Daily Mail. 'Surely what goes on behind the bathroom door should be left to the people who are behind it. It is money down the pan'.
The revelations were a gift to newspaper hacks. The Times welcomed the news with the phrase 'Britons are gripping their seat in fear', because new British cisterns are still being manufactured to contain six litres of water. Older properties' cisterns can contain up to 10 litres of water.
I recently had a new bathroom suite installed with one of the six-litre cisterns, the kind you can buy quite economically at places like B&Q. It has a short and a long flush. As a result I no longer need my house brick.
Britain tends to have cisterns which use more water than in other European countries. A European Commission study has looked into the toilet habits of Europeans. The outcome is expected to be an announcement before Christmas of a new 'Eco-label' for toilets.
The move is bound to bring the EU into further disrepute, especially among Eurosceptics. As one newspaper buff declared: 'Britain likes to pull the chain, but Brussels uses the most paper.' Ha ha!
But it is not just the Eurocrats who are advising us on our toilet habits. Academics from Utah have got in on the act. Men should stand as close as is possible over a urinal and aim downwards. I know, I hear you, there they go again stating the obvious. I might have aimed once upwards in a moment of high prank, but the researchers are sincere in their quest to limit what they call 'splashback' and its unhygienic effects. Splashback occurs when you aim at the urinal or toilet at a 90 degree angle. So please be careful, boys. But once you have done it properly, remember the flush may not confirm to EU scoping guidelines at the moment.
Britain, the EU reveals, has the fourth highest number of private and public lavatories in Europe, at 45.3 million, well behind Germany's 77 million, Spain's 49 million, and Italy's 46.5 million (Italy has the highest number of urinals in Europe at 8.2 million).
The EU remains unabashed. 'The user behaviour analysis carried out showed how the average water consumption differs among EU member states. Also the consumption between citizens of countries may vary significantly.' It seems Britain comes out top of the resulting flushing table with 1,125 million cubic metres of water used by domestic toilets in 2010, followed by Italy with 1,074 and Germany with 1,021 cubic metres. How they managed to separate out this water usage from other uses is anyone's guess. In the UK over 30 per cent of domestic water use is used for toilet flushing, compared to a European average of 25 per cent. Only Luxembourg uses more, at 33 per cent. I do not know how the Finns managed to use only 14 per cent of their water for toilet flushing – maybe their diet is significantly different, or perhaps they use their woods more.
So toilet lovers of the UK be prepared. The plan is for individual countries to award Eco-Label criteria to toilet and urinal manufacture. Our toilets look set to go green. One day soon, if the Eurocrats have their way, wherever you go in Europe, all flushes might be very similar.
Perhaps it might have been simpler just to give every household a free brick.
Why not download the EU report and read it in the toilet at your leisure? You can find it here.
Dick Skellington 27 November 2013
The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.
Cartoon by Catherine Pain