I'm shutting down my original Rockinon blog and I am moving some of my favourite posts to this site. I'm not being lazy; I'm recycling.
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It’s a weird world when David Gough, the blogger covering environmental concerns for The London Free Press, comes out against a bylaw designed to stop the practice of idling a car for more than a minute.
Gough wrote: “Five minutes makes sense, one minute just seems to be cutting it too close.”
He goes on to argue that dropping his son off at the arena might easily force him to idle his car for more than a minute while his son putzes around undoing his seat belt, turning off his video game and getting his hockey bag from the trunk. Gough says he could see his son costing him money.
Dave, the idea is to turn off your car. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s green. And, it’s old fashioned.
That’s right, old fashioned. When I was a boy, my father never let his car idle for more than a minute — not even in winter. He had been told by a mechanic that the manual choke made the carburetor fuel mix richer and this could cause a soot-like build-up on the plugs. This dirt, the mechanic said, caused engines to run-on when turned off.
Furthermore, the mechanic said the engine oil pump was not efficient when the car was idling. It worked best with the car underway and the engine reving higher.
Four decades ago, my father taught me: If you are stopping for more than a minute, turn off the car. If my dad could do it, we can all do it. And, my dad wasn’t even green.
This is a tricky post to write. It's both funny and disgusting. I thought of not writing this at all because children might stumble upon it. Then I realized, kids talk about this stuff all the time. Kids love to be both funny and disgusting.
My tale involves The London Free Press and their green blogger. It seems the newspaper blogger first heard of a Brazilian water-saving strategy quickly becoming the talk of the globe while listening to local radio. He found what he heard upsetting, as well as unbelievable.
He tried putting it out of his mind. He soon discovered he couldn't. The Brazilian story was everywhere. He even saw tweets about it on Twitter. I agree, it was an impossible story to ignore. I read about it in The Huffington Post.
The green blogger found the concept behind the Brazilian green strategy "gross." He got "the heebie jeebies just thinking about doing it." The senior online editor at the paper, showing his sharp wit, commented, "I smell a hoax. I saw this story, I don't believe it for a second."
The online editor flippantly called the story a hoax without a second's worth of investigation. I thought that his lack of initiative reflected poorly on the profession of journalism. If a senior online editor can't confirm whether a story is a hoax or not, who can? ( Uh, I know the answer, a dedicated blogger.)
Let's not drag this out. There is no point in an adult being so prissy. What offended the journalist's oh-do-delicate sensibilities? Talk of peeing in the shower to save water. Heck, it's not as if peeing in the shower was completely unheard of. Why even Kelly Clarkson admits doing it. Clarkson reportedly told Blender magazine: "Anybody who says they don’t is lying." I wonder if that includes our green blogger, senior online editor, journalist.
And Kelly is not the only one coming out of the (water) closet. Read this post by a blogger named Fran who confesses, "I often pee in the shower and have since I was young." Fran goes on to promise that she doesn't "pee in the bathtub or in swimming pools." (Good to know.)
The Huffington Post reported Brazilians are being encouraged to save water by urinating in the shower. Here, it is important to note: if you are healthy, your urine is sterile. The Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica says the campaign running on several television stations is using humor to persuade people to reduce flushes. The group claims a household can save up to 4,380 liters of water annually by following this green advice.
SOS spokeswoman Adriana Kfouri said Tuesday that the ad is "a way to be playful about a serious subject." The spot features cartoons of people from all walks of life — a trapeze artist, a basketball player, even an alien — all are urinating in the shower. Narrated by children's voices, the ad ends with: "Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic rain forest!"
If you are as put off as most folk, Tucson Citizen reporter Ryan Gargulinski will put you at ease on this and other germ-o-phobic myths. Read Ryan if you'd like to stop worrying about that public restroom toilet seat.
So was this whole thing just a hoax? I wasn't sure at first. If it was it sure fooled a lot of folk. For instance, both the Toronto Sun and Canoe carried the story a day before our local journalist dismissed it.
Using Orkut and Facebook I contacted people living in Brazil. I asked them if the campaign was a hoax. It took me just minutes using social media to confirm that the story is not a hoax.
When I googled some details of the story and added the word hoax, my only relevant hit was the comment by the local journalist. He may have learned not to pee in the shower but now he must learn what not to do into the wind.
If you'd like another way of saving on water, check out my post on dual flush HET toilets and water saving shower heads and faucets. I have installed all green plumbing fixtures in my main floor bathroom. It has cut my water usage and all without offending my wife or giving my house guests the heebie jeebies.
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This post has been edited from the original. I removed the name of the journalist. I believe the journalist exhibited a sloppy approach to confirming information that is all too common in the profession. Yet, I see no reason to embarrass the chap. I was wrong to have included his name in the original post.
I rechecked this story almost a decade later. I was able to easily confirm that I was right in my original assessment. The peeing-during-showering video is not a hoax. It the video is from the creative minds at F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi and can still be found both on YouTube and the S.O.S. Mata Atlântica web page.
And lastly, the video was a winner at the 2010 Gold Lion Cannes Advertising Awards. I'd post a better link but the best one is unavailable. It is behind a membership only wall. Breaching such a wall is a job for a journalist.
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