I visited Paris during my second trip to Europe quite a few years back. Although I’ve been to Europe tons of times, I have yet to return.
I have only good memories of the visit and was surprised to read that Paris is changing from the City of Light to the City of Pee.
Curbed reports that “Paris has a pee problem“. Supposedly the city has a bad “urinous odor“. If any of you have recently been to Paris, I’d love to know if this really true.
Public urination is causing damage to the city and sanitation workers have to clean over 1,800 miles of sidewalks each day to try to help with the problem. To help solve the issue, the city is going to try out a new plan- new public urinals.
The urinals, called the Uritrottoir are kind of like big flower pots. The urinal is a couple of boxes stacked up with the top box having a planter above it. The lower portion, where the person takes care of business, has an opening that goes into the bottom box which contains odor-fighting straw.
The Uritrottoir isn’t just a couple of boxes for people to publicly urinate into. When the box is full, a sensor connected to the internet alerts an attendant to switch out the box. The straw is removed and then taken outside of the city for composting.
Two of these new urinals are being tested out and if they get the job done, more will be added. The city paid just under $10,000 for the two units.
Find out more from Curbed here.
SKF- Good to hear. I guess dog poo is better than human pee everywhere! lol
DL- Interesting and good point.
Ted- If so, hopefully the pissing culture stays in Paris!
It’s culturally OK to pee in public in Paris. Everybody does it. The French call it urine sauvage.
I visit Paris frequently, most recently in August 2016, and didn’t notice any odors – outside of normal big city smells. Paris has had automated public urinals for many years. They provide a lot more privacy than these new urinals so I wonder how this will pan out.
I was there with my family over Thanksgiving. Cant say I remember human pee problem. I will say that the dog poo situation is a little messy. I saw only a few people picking up their dog’s poop while there. But, still, I will take Paris any day, love it!