Munich to get 'nice toilets' to serve cross-legged locals
The Bavarian capital has a pee problem - the city only has one public toilet for every 13,000 inhabitants. But a new plan could rescue desperate locals, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports.
The sparsity of public potties means that, should all the residents of the city suddenly decide they need to relieve themselves all at once, there could be a problem, the SZ reported on Thursday.
Munich doesn’t have the worst record when it comes to public toilets per capita. In Frankfurt 22,000 locals would have to share one public lavatory. But it is still a long way behind Stuttgart (8,500) and Bremen, where one loo comfortably serves 3,210 people.
In fact, Bremen has the best coverage of public toilets in the whole country, a fact attributable to its participation in the nette Toilette (nice toilet) scheme, under which restaurants can opt to make their toilets open for public use. This idea was first developed in the town of Aalen, Baden-Württemberg in 2000.
Since then, 210 other German towns have followed suit, paying a small licence fee for the right to place the logo in participating restaurants’ windows.
Bremen currently has 113 restaurants participating in the scheme, while Stuttgart outdoes that, with 246.
The subject of public peeing has already been in the news this week after a world-renowned church in Ulm complained that people peeing against its outer walls was causing erosion. The Ulm Minster's master mason called for more public toilets to be installed to prevent the rogue peeing.
Under the "nice toilet" system, Munich would have to pay a one-off fee of €2,580 for the right to use the nette Toilette logo. Additionally it would need to pay participating restaurants upwards of €30 a month as compensation.
Ingolstadt and Regensburg have both already hopped on the "nice toilet" train and are paying participating restaurants €50. Bremen pays restaurants there €100 a month, but even this is cheaper than the cost of installing fully automatic toilets, the SZ notes.
The Munich city council has already agreed to implement the project in the city outskirts, where there is a special need for public lavatories.
A plan to widen the project, with a list of 120 participating restaurants already drawn up and a €48,000 budget penciled in, is to be discussed by the city council in November.
Let’s just hope Bavarians with a few too many glasses of Helles beer in their system can wait that long.
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The sparsity of public potties means that, should all the residents of the city suddenly decide they need to relieve themselves all at once, there could be a problem, the SZ reported on Thursday.
In fact, Bremen has the best coverage of public toilets in the whole country, a fact attributable to its participation in the nette Toilette (nice toilet) scheme, under which restaurants can opt to make their toilets open for public use. This idea was first developed in the town of Aalen, Baden-Württemberg in 2000.
Since then, 210 other German towns have followed suit, paying a small licence fee for the right to place the logo in participating restaurants’ windows.
Bremen currently has 113 restaurants participating in the scheme, while Stuttgart outdoes that, with 246.
The subject of public peeing has already been in the news this week after a world-renowned church in Ulm complained that people peeing against its outer walls was causing erosion. The Ulm Minster's master mason called for more public toilets to be installed to prevent the rogue peeing.
Under the "nice toilet" system, Munich would have to pay a one-off fee of €2,580 for the right to use the nette Toilette logo. Additionally it would need to pay participating restaurants upwards of €30 a month as compensation.
Ingolstadt and Regensburg have both already hopped on the "nice toilet" train and are paying participating restaurants €50. Bremen pays restaurants there €100 a month, but even this is cheaper than the cost of installing fully automatic toilets, the SZ notes.
The Munich city council has already agreed to implement the project in the city outskirts, where there is a special need for public lavatories.
A plan to widen the project, with a list of 120 participating restaurants already drawn up and a €48,000 budget penciled in, is to be discussed by the city council in November.
Let’s just hope Bavarians with a few too many glasses of Helles beer in their system can wait that long.
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