Pissoirs one of many options

(July 14) - It looks as though we will soon have a trial run of late night pissoirs. That’s a good thing. We’ll never know how well they work unless we give them a good go.

If the thousands of revellers spilling out of the big box bars behave themselves, everything will flow smoothly. It isn’t too big of an if, is it? Those gentlemen are world famous all over town for their behaviour. When all the open air stalls are in use, they will politely line up and wait their turn.

This discussion of places to go has had its benefits. It got us all thinking outside the box. Every problem can have several different solutions. The most obvious ones got ruled out first. This would start with the bar stool tax. A set charge for every licensed spot. The bar owners are not thrilled with this idea. They have a notion they already pay enough property tax. So we keep on looking.

Another idea was to put public washrooms in an empty store. This would have the added advantage of being relatively gender neutral. When some can stand while others sit, no one’s human rights are threatened. But the police don’t much like this idea. You never know what’s going on behind the closed doors of a public washroom. So we keep on looking.

If the pissoirs fail, there is still at least one more way. Most of the bar washrooms have coin vending machines. They dispense various personal items that might be of use for those who, as we used to say when I was a lot younger, hope to get lucky at closing time. Things like combs and colognes and other items.

Some enterprising entrepreneur could add new machines. Drop in a couple of toonies and out pops a pair of Depends. Problem solved.

They might even become the trendy fashion statement for responsible revellers.

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Tim Hortons is telling us lately that they can recycle their used coffee cups and lids. They say they’ll be gathering them up in Guelph before the end of the year. They send them to Turtle Island Recycling just north of Toronto. The people in Guelph who are frustrated by the three-stream sorting system are always happy to hear anything that questions its integrity.

The city says the cups can’t be recycled. They have a layer of a thin plastic film that keeps the paper from going soggy when the hot coffee is poured in.

If Tim says it can, and the city says it can’t, a lot of people quickly believe Tim. No further questions asked. Or answered.

The city’s website doesn’t help clear up the confusion. It contains a detailed sorting list for the wet-dry-plus program that says paper coffee cups go in the blue bag and plastic cup lids go into the clear bag.

It is hard to picture Tim Hortons as environmental leaders. If they were, they would give away their used coffee grinds for use in back yard compost bins. Or they would stop double cupping hot drinks and start using paper sleeves like everyone else. Or they would abandon their roll up the rim litter creation project.

These days, everyone wants to project a clean green image. In a world where perception always trumps reality, a good marketing campaign will create this image for anyone willing to pay the bill. They give us carbon neutral cellphones, environmentally friendly sports utility vehicles, litter free coffee shops.

If reality was anything like the public relations image, the world would be in great shape. We wouldn’t be grinding our way down the slope to the infamous tipping point.