Flushing

One of the great levelers is that we all need to use the toilet.  We all poo.  Every single one of us.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to have modern flush toilets have become accustomed to having the unpleasantness just go away with the touch of a button or the push of a lever.  Our human waste just goes away. But it doesn't.  We know that it goes into the sewer or septic tank.  What ever we throw down the toilet, goes there too.

When visiting the Greek islands we were confronted with a new rule.  The only thing that gets flushed is what comes out of our bodies. The paperwork that goes along with this bodily function goes in the little bin next to the toilet. So, you wipe yourself afterward and put the paper in the basket, not down the toilet.

My initial reaction was, "Ew!"  I'd rather it just get dropped after use into the darkness of the water and never be seen again.  I didn't want any further interaction.  But, as a good guest in somebody else's country, I did as custom dictated and disposed of the toilet paper in the bin rather than flushing it.  After a few days, I didn't even think about it.  I just complied.

The diameter of standard plumbing in Greece cannot handle paper.  Use the bin provided.  You get used to it.  Woe to the tourist who clogs the system by ignoring the custom.  I wouldn't want to be the cause of having to call the plumber out or the reason there is a back up of nastiness.

The benefit of this is that the seas the Greek islands I have been to have been fabulous!  So clean and unpolluted. I was able to contrast this with the water around Malta.  Same sea but different regulations.  The sea was much more polluted.

One of the benefits of only flushing what comes out of your bottom and not the paperwork afterward, is that very little else will be flushed.  No tampons will be made to disappear.  No condoms or ear swabs and certainly no moist towelettes.

See where I am headed with this?  The toilet is not this magical device that makes things disappear.  Flushed items do not just go away.  They go somewhere.  Biological waste will be managed.  It will be processed.  The other stuff won't.

A lot of the plastic will end up having to be scraped out of the sewers by actual people who are paid to do it.  Condoms, dental floss and disposable wipes are the big culprits in the sewer.  What doesn't get cleared out by those poor people, may end up on our oceans.

There are vast rafts or gyres of plastic in our oceans.   They are so large that they have names.

Please don't flush anything down the toilet that hasn't come out of your body or is actual toilet paper.

Written in 2010 and discovered in drafts this morning