German city uses water-repellent paint to splash public urinators with their own pee
Hamburg's nightclub district fights gross problem by giving public urinators a taste of their own medicine.
CBC News
By Lauren O'Neil, CBC News
06 March 2015


Reuters reported this week that a “local interest group” from the renowned club-hopping neighbourhood has applied a special hydrophobic paint to the walls of buildings in the area to deter what Germans call “Wildpinkler.”

This water-repellent paint, similar to the type that’s used to coat cargo ships, will send any liquid bouncing straight back towards its source with approximately the same amount of force that it came in with.

As you can imagine, urinating onto a wall covered in hydrophobic paint makes for one very messy experience—which is exactly the point.

"This paint job sends a direct message back to perpetrators that their wild urinating on this wall is not welcome," said Julia Staron of the St. Pauli’s Community of Interest group to Reuters. "The paint protects the buildings and the residents and most importantly it sends a signal this behaviour is not on."

YouTube video
Walls that pee back on you — how poetic!” wrote one YouTube commenter. “We need this all over the world!”

“Best use yet for superhydrophobic coatings yet,” wrote another. “Guessing there are many neighborhoods near nightclub districts that could use this.”

Expensive
Some aren't fans of the initiative, however, saying that a better solution would be to install more public toilets instead of using an expensive substance to combat the problem (for the record, it costs about €500 — or $684 CAD — to cover a six-square metre area with hydrophobic paint.)

Others point out that public urinators could simply “pee diagonally” to avoid any splash-back.

Condo staircases?
This might work.


top  contents  appendix   previous   next