back to article Brazilian TV ad: Save water, piss in the shower

Brazilian treehuggers have released a TV ad encouraging people to urinate in the shower so as to avoid unnecessary use of water when flushing the lavatory. The short vid shows various authoritative leaders of opinion including Mahatma Gandhi and King Kong - in cartoon form - engoldening their showertime experience in righteous …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The felxible hose can also be useful...

    ...when rinsing after washing up.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    Don't do it!

    I used to do it when I was a kid. Forms a nice yellowish layer on the bottom of tub over time.

    Pissing Jobs.

  3. xpert_con
    Thumb Up

    Amazing

    HAHAHAHA there is nothing finer than watching that kind of nonsense. Am I thinking that there will be a Tarrent on TV episode with this clip's name on it? I understand the need to conserve water and natural resources but is this not pushing things a little too far?

  4. Tom 94
    Thumb Up

    Fair enough, really...

    If it's yellow, let it mellow.

    If it's brown, flush it down.

  5. Solomon Grundy

    Clean Water Toilets are Stupid

    Putting drinking water in a toilet (as we do now) is probably the greatest waste of resources in the world - Facebook, Twitter, and SUV's notwithstanding.

    Contrary to the belief of many media-follower's it will be water, not oil, that becomes that sparks off the next worldwide war/conflict. There is already an unbelievably scarce amount of clean water available and as long as the problem is ignored (i.e. drinking water in toilets, cities in the desert, farms in the desert, etc...) it will only get worse and the entire world will be held hostage by Canada, not the Middle East.

    The world must change its wasteful ways or prepare to learn French.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    extremely unnceccasary

    I already micturate in the shower every morning, it's part of my routine. Doesn't everyone do it? (regularly I mean)

    That's not beer.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Or...

    When I was at a hostel in a rather dry part of South Africa not so long ago, the loos had a little rhyme above the cistern "if its yellow, let it mellow, if its brown, flush it down". Worked pretty well for saving water, apparently.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If they'd done an ad to encourage people to piss in the sink ...

    ... then the practice might become more socially acceptable ... and I wouldn't have to flush the unused toilet afterwards when I think someone might have been listening.

  9. Fred 1

    Fancy a nice golden shower

    Even though I am a complete green ecofreak, I still find this idea wildly impractical.

    The fact is I am also a smelly hippy/computer geek, and there is absolutely no way that i could hold my bladder for the six months between showers.

  10. Matt 75
    Joke

    alternative

    You'd think they might offer the alternative of just not flushing the toilet after going for a pee... How do you say 'If it's yellow let it mellow' in Portuguese?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Brilliant

    Microsoft can learn from this.

    Save water: bing in the shower

  12. Martin 19
    Pint

    A) How much water is used by a toilet flush?

    And B) how much water runs through the shower while you stop washing to have a piss?

    I'd be willing to bet that they're pretty close.

    /icon for obvious reasons

  13. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    @Solomon Grundy

    > Contrary to the belief of many media-follower's it will be water, not oil, that becomes that sparks off the next worldwide war/conflict

    Ermmm... if we have plentiful oil (or nuclear power or windmills or other fuel), can't we use that to produce clean drinking water by distilling seawater?

    It's all about the energy supply.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    I have been doing this for years

    Why waste water when you can sort it all out in one go? also this increases your morning efficiency - except having to poke the lumpy bits down the plug hole.

    One could consider installing one of those waste processors you get in household sinks I guess.

  15. Sam Mason
    FAIL

    remind me why it matters again?

    I don't get it, the world is *not* running out of water so "saving water" seems somewhat pointless.

    Saving the energy used while purifying the water makes sense and reducing chemical usage is laudable. How much of either are actually used I don't know, but even if I did I'd hazard a guess that industrial use so enormously overshadows normal consumer use that this will make about as much difference as pissing into the wind.

  16. Doug Glass
    Pint

    Just Hold IT Now

    They must have HUGE bladders or else they shower several times a day or else they don't drink beer or else they must have showers at work or..............

  17. Xee Thot
    Thumb Up

    Another hint

    If you also pee in your feet you'll prevent any fungus from growing also. Uric acid (present in the urin) is used to treat most skin fungii.

    Good feet free, just pee on them while you shower.

  18. Dieter

    Remake

    Will there be a Playmobil remake?

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Flush loo with shower water

    Irrespective of the actual benefits to the world, I think that adding a grey water tank to the house to store shower/bath/washing machine waste water to use to flush the loo would be an interesting weekend geeky DIY project. Two options: use gravity, in which case I would need to swap the loo and the washing machine (visitors might not be cool about having the loo in the kitchen I guess) or pump the waste water upstairs with an old washing machine pump. Hmm, how much energy does that take?

    Oh, and I once saw a fantastic washbasin built in to the top of a loo cistern. Basically you just replace the existing cistern lid with a concave one. After you flush, the cistern fills via this basin, so you can wash your hands in the water that is flowing into the cistern for the next flush. Fantastic idea, only slight problem is that it's cold water.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    notes from Brazil

    The point is, meeting the water needs of the two huge coastal cities (Rio and Sao Paulo, probably 25 million or more people in them) is drying out the big coastal forest in Brazil (ok, it was big, but not so big any more).

    @ Doug Glass

    Yes, they do shower several times a day. Goes with the climate. Even geeks shower every 2 days or so. Not too many geeks there, actually - it's a nation of talkers. So geeks (especially gringo geeks) are viewed as a rare and strange breed. Another good thing for geeks is that the nation runs on caffeine!

    My Brazilian lady love has long favoured having a sneaky wee in the shower (but NOT the bath) - personally the crudely wired electric shower heads puts a dampener on the occasion.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Found the link...

    I've found a pic of the combined cistern lid / basin that I mentioned above:

    http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1361883.htm

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    more showers

    The thing is that brazilian people have a lot more showers than british people for example

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    There are people who don't do it?

    Weird. It all goes down the same drain, so just let it flow. Not only is it convenient (and good for your feet, as Xee Thot points out), it is also eco.

  24. Seán

    Fascinating

    Living in Ireland the concept of running out of water is completely alien, but I might take a crap in the shower to show solidarity.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As it's Brazil

    which I have heard has some pretty liberal people (and even some pretty, liberal people too) I would have thought they could have dug out the old one:

    Save water: Bath with a friend

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    The crap...

    ...people will do to promote religion. I'm amazed. Really. Next up: piss on your hands and don't wash afterwards, it's good for the skin! Tossers...

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I though all guys did this...

    And you usually wash your hair while your doing it so you don't waste water watching yourself pee!!!

    AC for obvious reasons.

  28. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    Cartoons

    Maybe I'm getting old, but that cartoon artist seemed to really REALLY like to show pics of guys pissing. I mean, couldn't they have just as well gotten their point across with only 2 or 3 scenes of pissing?

    Oh, and what were they implying in the scene where the father and son are in the tub together? The son's stream was going down, the father's was arching up...

    Guess I'm just too out-of-date to understand these newfangled pissing cartoons.

  29. Dick Emery
    Happy

    @Thad

    Well the Japanese used public baths for years and still do in some places. Lets get back that community spirit and bath with our neighbours. Just don't piss in the bath.

  30. The Infamous Grouse
    Go

    @Anonymous Coward

    The Australian cistern/basin add-on is clever but it's nothing new. On a couple of trips to Japan ten years ago I saw such toilets everywhere, and they were neat and purpose-built with the basin in the lid of the cistern, not bolted on as an afterthought. I have wondered for years why modern Western homes don't employ such a system, especially in some of these tiny downstairs WCs where space is at a premium.

    On the other hand these Japanese lavs also tended to sport enormous arms at the sides of the pan, covered in controls that made the bog look like the command chair of the Enterprise. Japanese innovation is marvellous, but sometimes they really need to learn when to stop adding stuff.

    Go. Boldly.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Hmmm!!

    Golden shower anyone??

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Solomon Grundy

    Look up the word bilingual.

  33. blem wit
    Alien

    Insert witty title here

    Writing as a brazilian, born, raised and still living here, I am ashamed I had to have this laugh here in the El Reg. The state of the media and, TV in particular, is so disgracefull that I havent even owned a tv in nearly 10 year.

    But, alas, I digress. I find it ironic that Brazil´s predominant flag colors are Green and Yellow, suposed to represent the rain forests and the gold in the mines . We actually call the caountry Green-and-Yellow Nation, so its only fitting, I guess. But bad tv ads notwithstanding, urine is actually sterile. It is not ridden with bacteria (if you dont have an infection, at least) and if you will recall, soldiers used it to clean wounds in a battle field because it is garanteed to be safer than any water you would find in the frag. Dont underestimate the power of your filtering system.

    To answer someone who asked about the rhyme in portuguese, it would be

    "Se é amarelo, deixe envelhecer. Se for marrom, dê a descarga"

    Too bad the catchy tone is inevitably lost in the translation....

    Alien, because it is green and yellow.

  34. ThinkingOutLoud
    Paris Hilton

    Water, Wars, Birds & Paris

    I partially agree with an early poster that water is as likely to trigger war as oil. There are already areas of Africa, Middle and Far East where dams are displacing people reliant on water flows.

    Right, that's the serious sh*t out of the way.

    Peeing while showering makes sense. Peeing in the sink is OK for blokes but not birds because they sit on the bloody thing, tearing it off the wall if they're fat.

    I wonder if Paris takes an occasional golden shower? Just to keep her feet fungi free, of course.

  35. jake Silver badge

    Comment on article, @Thad &@AC15:04

    Peeing in the shower is like masterbation ... It splits people into two camps, those who admit to having done it, and liars.

    Thad writes: "Save water: Bath with a friend"

    I'm fairly certain that when the wife & I shower together, we use more water than we would have if we showered separately. I guess I could time it and find out, if I cared enough. Besides, this is Sonoma. We save water by drinking wine[1].

    Our property up in Fort Bragg has a gray water system that we use for the loos, the lawns, the roses, etc. The gray water goes into a cistern under the house until it reaches a certain level, then is pumped uphill (the pump runs every other day, or thereabouts). If the pump fails, overflow spills into the flower bed alongside the house and triggers an alarm (red light) in the house. Sludge needs to be cleaned out of the bottom of the cistern once or twice a year. Over-flow from the top cistern (very rare, also trigering an alarm in the house) goes into a dry well. Sludge needs cleaning out every three or four years. Gravity does the rest (don't need huge flow to irrigate roses, or fill loo tanks), except for the lawn sprinkler circuit, it has it's own pipe from the top cistern with a pump & pressure tank.

    After settling in the two tanks, the resulting water is surprisingly clear. We also catch rain water off the various roofs for irrigating the veggies, with similar cistern, pump and alarm systems. All is powered by 8D "fire engine" batteries that are solar charged, with mains or generator backup when the sun's not shining.

    Apropos of the article, I have a custom 12" X 4" tile in the shower that reads "No peeing in the shower! The proprietor has to clean the gray water system periodically!" In reality, I run a little bleach into the system before doing maintenance ...

    [1] That's a joke ... Hydrate with water. Wine with supper. Beer after "dumb, heavy work".

  36. Stevie

    Bah!

    [4 Solomon Grundy ] If we're dealing with Canadians, why learn French? Only a minority are Francophone.

    Should any militant Quebecois turn up at the water-table (ahahaha) we can tease them about how Napoleon would have sold Canada to the Americans if they'd won on the Plains of Abraham. He cldn't offload his New World holdings fast enough in order to fund his wars. French-speaking Yanks? The French-French would regard them even worse than they do Canadian French, which is saying something.

    Anyway, I plan on moving to Antarctica where, thanks to my gas-guzzling, pissing in the shower AND flushing the (clean) toilet anyway and running my dishwasher and washing machines when empty to keep them nice and clean, I'll have increased global warming and as a result have access to all the fresh water I'll ever need from the melting ice-cap.

    Got to dash. I need to visit the shower.

  37. OrsonX
    FAIL

    UK Water Shortage?

    Only those leaking pipes hold us back from being able to leave the shower running 24/7

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Ah, living in the mountains..

    Sure, the gletchers are shrinking, but we still get to piss in the water first..

    :-)

    Incidentally, I do actually like a grey tank. You can spool all sorts of stuff into that, wash machines, rain water (assuming you don't have a garden that needs it), and for those that need to offset a lot of guilt, waste water from airco and dishwasher.

    I'm actually waiting for a domestic version of the flush free urinal. If that can somehow be combined with a need-to-flush-for-the sticky-bits crap processor that could save water too. My current experience with water saving toilets is that they do the opposite: they often need flushing twice. Or that could be my diet..

  39. sage
    Alert

    Mohandas?

    I think you mean Mohandas Gandhi, not Mahatma. I'm pretty sure his racism and previous sexuality prevented him from attaining mahatma (or saint) status.

  40. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    What? People don't do this already?

    This has been my daily habit since for ever.

    Where I live, fresh water is very scarce.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    IT angle

    Glad to see there is an IT angle to this story with the inclusion of Stephen Hawking with a computer in his bathroom in one of the scenes...

  42. kissingthecarpet
    Gates Horns

    I've got a bath, not a shower

    So, what? Do I piss in it before I get in, during, or after?

    The "piss cures foot-rot" thing is referenced in Spike Milligan's excellent war memoir "Rommel? Gunner Who?" (or is it "Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall"?) where an old sergeant says, when they complain of sore feet "Piss in yer boots lads!" so they all leave their boots full of piss every night, some forgetting to empty them before putting them on again in the morning.

    You should change the Gates photo for one of Ballmer. He's like the Dick Cheney of the software world.

  43. Michael 28
    Coat

    next....

    ...they'll be asking us to drink it

    it's the marketing boys taking the...er ..

    mine's the waterproof trousers with bicycle clips....ta.

  44. Solomon Grundy

    @Bah

    Because that minority, for some inexplicable reason, have more control over the export of water and water technologies than the Anglo's in Ottawa. Some smart guy in Quebec saw an opportunity a long time ago and wrangled water power out of the crown. Largely I expect so that they could eventually force the Queen and her evil minions out of the country. Je me souviens - they've been looking for revenge for a looong time.

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    The world is crazier than I thought

    1 - This is ridiculous because...

    2 - How much water is this saving relative to the leaks from an aging infrastructure? and...

    3 - Surely the problem is an irresponsible birth rate?

  46. Solomon Grundy

    @Solomon Grundy

    Nik tu mère.

    You really are a fool aren't you. I'm sure your ancestors are forever sorry for their failings.

  47. phoenix
    Megaphone

    Taking the Piss

    @ Solomon Grundy : Nice try there is only one problem the mjor metropolitan areas in this country other than London (Birmingham et al.) are afair way away from the sea so the issue is not power the the enormous cost, unless we use rivers and aquaducts (Rommans - brilliant), of a massive water main network to supply said salt free water to some 8m+ people.

    I Try my best to explain to people that we need to reduce energy comsumption as much as generate it from non fossil derived sources.

    On the water note it is good to see the Germans are ahead again by requiring rainwater storage tanks to be fitted to new housing and we are erm still struggling with decent insulation.

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    I love.........

    the smell of piss In the morning.

  49. TeeCee Gold badge

    @Solomon Grundy

    Prepare to speak French?

    Not a chance. That's one war that'll be really worth fighting. The English'll fight to the last man and I think the yanks might even risk their social reputation and forego being fashionably late for it.

  50. Ronn1e
    Jobs Horns

    TRAMPS

    This is stupid why pee in the shower where your going to wash. The first day I moved in to my flat I said that's it if anyone pee's in the shower i'm gonna **** you up and then pee on your bed. I'd rather they pee'd in the toilet like normal people. Thats why toilets we're invented. Fair enough if they don't flush (which I also disagree with because it smells and leaves a nasty yellow ring of shit in the loo) but not in the shower! Whats the world coming to? who we saving this water for exactly. Maybe in Brazil but i'll tell you what until I have to choose between drinking water and flushing water its not going to bother me at all to flush every time! tramps.

    Steve Jobs because he smells like most peoples showers by the looks of things.

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