Tag Archive for: pee

Save Water, Pee Outside

With the recent shower peeing campaign a confirmed success*, what’s the next step? I can’t vouch for it’s veracity or sincerity, but Atlanta-based peeoutside.org is the driving (and I’m guessing, heavily-male) force behind a volunteer effort that they claim can save millions of gallons per day.

However, sustainable water supply will be achieved one wee bit at a time! Plus, consider this:
Number of species on the earth that pee outside: 4,999,999
Number of species on the earth that pee inside: 1

So if you’re ready to sign up, you can join their 1,300-plus member Facebook group or follow them (from a safe distance) on Twitter. Peeoutside.org also invites you to send in your stories and pictures (and a number of people already have!) Finally, be sure forget to mark your calendar for April 19th, the festive annual Pee Outside Day event! (Wow! Jaime Pressly should have claimed she was “going green!”)

peeoutside.org: visit the member-submitted photo gallery

Forget your milquetoast manners, we’re trying to save the planet here! The website’s FAQ will help you overcome your reticence about this this frowned-upon (and usually illegal) behavior.

Q. Are you suggesting that people expose themselves in public?
No. Just so we are clear, the suggestion is that people pee on their own property, in a private setting, preferably under the cover of night.  Apartment and condo owners probably shouldn’t pee over ledges.  Just be sure to use your head when peeing outside.

Q. I would rather not pee outside–what are some options?
We understand that some people just don’t like peeing outside, but every little bit helps! Some approved methods are:
– Pee in a cup/bottle and dispose of it outside.
– Pee down a drain of your choice
– Pee in the shower, only if you are doing something else at the same time.
– Use the old “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down” method.
– Or, just don’t flush every pee.

*In the unscientific but esteemed weekly Aguanomics poll, 3 out of 4 admit to shower-pee water conservation methods.

I Hope They’ve Been Chlorinating

It’s Memorial Day weekend! That means Americans are heading en masse to the pool. Hopefully, many of that masse will take this article from cnn.com to heart, and resist the temptation to keep the party rolling non-stop by peeing in the pool.

Although urine in the water probably will not cause swimmers to go to the emergency room, it causes “more of a respiratory, ocular irritation: the red puffy eyes or a cough, an itchy throat,” said Michele Hlavsa, an epidemiologist in the division of parasitic diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” A big health message is not to urinate or pee in the water.”

And it happens far more frequently than water-lovers would like to think. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted in April and May, 17 percent admitted relieving themselves in a swimming pool. Even the Olympics’ most decorated swimmer, Michael Phelps, confessed to urinating in the water to TV host Jimmy Kimmel in a 2008 interview.

And if that’s not enough to put a damper on this weekend’s pool party fun, the survey

found that 11 percent of the surveyed adults said they have swum with a runny nose, 7 percent with an exposed rash or cut and 1 percent when ill with diarrhea. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Suddenly, a 3.1% margin of error seems HUGE! But never mind, I’m being a party pooper, aren’t I? (pun score!) Dive in anyway, and here’s a soundtrack for some summer fun: “I Peed in the Pool,” a bad-taste parody of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” (You can buy the mp3 here if you’re so inspired!)

Lyrics include: I peed in the pool and I liked it, It saved me a trip to the toilet
I peed in the pool ‘stead of waiting, I hope they’ve been chlorinating