14 DAY TRIAL // Dutch politician Bert Wassink now wishes to convince the people living in Aa en Hunze, a municipality in the northeastern Netherlands, that their relieving themselves in the shower is a most inspired decision as far as environmental protection is concerned.
Apparently, this peculiar recommendation is part and parcel of a green-oriented project he launched at the beginning at this year and which takes aim at Aa en Hunze residents' not-so-environmentally friendly lifestyle.
As Bert Wassink explains, peeing in the shower means that one's toilet gets to take a break from being flushed annoyingly often. Therefore, people will no longer waste significant amounts of this precious resource.
Given the fact that water costs money, this politicians hopes that financial incentives will also play their part in convincing people to give due attention to his recommendations.
“It [i.e. relieving oneself in the shower] saves lots of clean water and is good for the environment,” this city councilman supposedly said.
Furthermore, “If you combine showers and peeing, you save a lot of water and money, so why not?”
Dutch News reports that, according to several estimates, the average individual living in this part of the Netherlands uses as much as 39 liters of water per day while taking one, two or maybe even more showers. On the other hand, each person flushes as much as 36 liters of water on a daily basis.
From this standpoint, combining the two activities in order to cut water consumption in half does not seem like such a bad idea after all.
Still, odds are there will be some people who will look at this proposal with a certain amount of skepticism and doubt.
Just for the record, it was not very long ago when a team of researchers went through the trouble of explaining to people that, scientifically speaking, pee is by no means something to be frowned upon.
“Urine is essentially sterile so there isn't actually anything to kill in the first place. Urine is largely just salts and water with moderate amounts of protein and DNA breakdown products,” biochemist Stuart Jones stated.