Posted on 29 October 2024 by Jeff Fuge | Reading time 3 mins
Blocked toilets are a nuisance at the best of times. But if you’re responsible for lots of loos, preventing people from flushing products that cause problems for your plumbing is a critical communication task.
Not all toilets are not born equal. What might be flushable at your main-drain-connected home in town may block the system at a rural holiday cottage with a septic tank… or clog the pipes on a plane or bung-up the drains on a train.
It’s a classic communication challenge, and I encountered several attempts at solving it on a recent day out.
They approaches fell into three categories: let’s call them the Patronising, the Positive and the Playful.
The patronising
What do you do when people flush sanitary towels down a loo that gets blocked by sanitary towels? Put up a sign saying ‘Do not flush sanitary towels’ of course!
Oh, but hang on… baby wipes have also been known to cause problems, so you better add them to the sign. Oh, and face wipes… and incontinence pads…
The result is a sign like the one I encountered in the toilets at a visitor centre. It’s all-caps title of DON’TS and general tone makes it feel angry. And it feels patronising, not least because many people would know most of this in any case.
It’s also highly ineffective. As well as talking down to people, its length means many will not bother read it – and others may react against it, feeling provoked into stuffing something weird down the bog just because it’s not on the list.
“Well, they didn’t say not to flush potatoes, and spuds are biodegradable!”
The positive
Sign in a toilet with a long list of what must not be put down the loo.
If you take a step back and flip the situation around, you can create an infinitely more-effective solution by asking ‘So, what can people put down the loo?’.
If blockages are likely, then the list of flush-friendly items likely to be a short one.
Train company GWR have taken this positive approach to the power sockets in their train carriages. In recent times, people charging e-bike and e-scooters on trains has presented a risk as some unregulated and retrofitted DIY batteries have gone up in flames. Not what you want on the 9.15 to Paddington, so a sign that helps prevent this is clearly needed.
While a plug socket is not a toilet (so don’t try putting baby wipes into it) the challenge here is the same: whether to communicate what people can do, or what they cannot.
GWR have opted for the former, a small sign says ‘Phones and laptops only’. Short, smart and unequivocal. Great work, job done.
If the management at the visitor centre had been tasked with the job of creating the sign for GWR, the sign would have been five times the size and said ‘Do not plug in e-scooters, e-bikes, e-cigarettes, travel irons, hair driers or hair straighteners into this socket’.
Back to our toilet challenge, and a positive mantra such as ‘Only pee, toilet paper and poo down the loo’ would be a better solution than a list of don’ts.
But another approach could be better still.
The playful
Power socket and sign clearly explaining you can only plug in phones and laptops.
Another train company, South Western Railway, has another take on the problem.
Under their toilet seats is a large and unmissable sticker that at first glance is a patronising one in the vein of ‘Don’t flush this, don’t flush that’. But the message continues through a lively and increasingly ridiculous list to make its point using humour.
The approach is the friendliest of the bunch, and this playfulness will get far more people on side and compliant than the first approach or the second.
Here’s the thing: in a toilet cubicle, no one can see you. If you do flush that banned baby wipe, you’re likely get away with it. So, an authoritative sign saying ‘Only pee, toilet paper and poo’ is easily ignored by those who can’t be bothered to find the bin – or who react negatively to being told what to do.
But humour is a great way to get people on side. Further to reading the funny sign, people will subconsciously feel more like they are doing the dirty on a friend than on a company if they flush something they know they shouldn’t.
In his book The Illusion of Choice, Richard Shotton outlines how Melbourne Metro used humour to reduce the number of rail accidents involving young people. Their video of an amusingly morbid song about ‘The dumbest way to die’ has been viewed over 200 million times, and is the most shared public service message ever.
Most importantly, in the three months after it first aired, there was a 21% reduction in accidents compared to the previous year.
Summary
Patronising and pointlessly long message should always be avoided if you want to prevent your communication going down the drain. Positive, instructive messages have their place, but the most powerful approach in the privacy of a privy may be a playful one.
