Going Green in the Restroom?
Earth Day is right around the bend, and everyone seems to be on the green bandwagon lately. It seems respectable to want to save the planet. I’m all for it when the price is right. I’m just not going to buy a “green cleaner” when the regular cleaner is half of the price, especially when the regular cleaner has been used for generations without the earth imploding. I did make a choice to buy a vehicle with better gas mileage, although that was more for financial and political reasons, so the environmental reasons are just icing on the cake.
Businesses are jumping on the bandwagon as well. Hotels don’t want to wash your towels and sheets every night, but again, that’s probably more for financial reasons than for environmental reasons. Other business decisions, such as recycling are practical and noble. There is, however, one place where businesses should not “go green”: the restroom.
My biggest pet-peeve about the whole thing is when paper towels are eliminated in favor of the air dryers in restrooms. The paper towels that most public restrooms have are the brown ones anyway, made from previously-recycled materials. So by providing them, you aren’t completely anti-Earth.
First of all, they are loud and they scare the crap out of small kids. Trust me, I know. If the kids were to dry their hands before using the restroom, it would make them wet their pants. It’s a good thing they wash their hands afterward.
Yesterday, we visited Stone Mountain and Tristan had an accident. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that the accident was so bad that I lost my lunch during the clean-up process. That is not an exaggeration. Some messes can not be cleaned up with cheap toilet paper. When we left, that restroom stall was thoroughly violated. I honestly would have cleaned up the mess had paper towels been around. Unfortunately, some minimum-wage employee had to do it.
I was once, in my grocery store days, the guy who had to clean up comparable messes. I always wondered how someone could “violate” a restroom like that. Now I know. In this case, it’s because someone tried to go green.
