300% public shaming. Japan is an example of this working, to an unbelievably ideal extent even.
Public restrooms in Japan are *clean*, they are spotless and sanitary no matter what time of day you visit one. You can probably eat off of those toilet seats, for all I know.
The reason for this is because individuals who do not clean up after themselves in public spaces are shamed and ridiculed by Japanese society at large with no holds barred. It's "just not how upstanding members of society operate" to make a mess, be it in a public restroom or anywhere else, in Japan.
You might see Japanese people picking up trash and cleaning up after themselves when leaving a public venue like a stadium or theater, probably other peoples' refuse too while they are at it. Frankly bewildering acts from the perspective of most westerners, but it's literally that sort of social attitude to be upstanding individuals that leads to clean public restrooms.
Not being from Japan, I’m curious: how does this work in practice? If I were to go into a bathroom in Japan and smear my own shit all over the walls and leave, 1. how does anyone know I did it, 2. if somehow someone actually knew I did it, how exactly would I be shamed and ridiculed, and 3. how would that negatively affect me if I didn’t care about shame or was incapable of feeling shame.
Japanese are raised from the very beginning to be ashamed of making a mess and not cleaning up, to be ashamed of being irresponsible. Everyone is taught that "the Sun is watching you", that someone (or something!) somewhere is always watching you and judging you for your actions.
A westerner might shit up a public restroom, intentionally or otherwise, and say to himself "I don't care; cleaning this up is the janitor's job."
A Japanese person won't even dare, because they are taught to clean up regardless of a janitor.
It is a common tradition and mandate in Japanese schools for students to clean their classrooms (and every-so-often even restrooms!) themselves at the end of the school day. Yes, the schools have janitors, the students are told to clean up themselves anyway because that's just how good people behave.
This is all a facet of education and parenting, and the result of generations and millenia of such teachings. Their thought processes are fundamentally different from the west: A better society starts by being better individuals themselves first.
Public restrooms in the west being an absolute shit show (pun intended) are a reflection of failed education and parenting in western society. The west can, and should, do better.
Great, but this contradicts your other post that seemed to be claiming that bathroom shaming specifically was the solution the bathroom problem, which the parent was rightly incredulous of as how it actually works in Japan.
This also works for obesity, and I've seen it in action in many nations apart from just Japan. Social pressure works. We've known it works for millennia. I'm not sure why we suddenly started believing that social pressure to not litter and eat less was ineffective and even immoral.
Ultimately the difference is that American society is one in which individualism is prized over all. The greatest evils are those that would in any way infringe on something that could be considered a personal liberty. And it’s only gotten worse in the last 50 years. I can’t imagine modern American society rising to meet any major challenge of the last 100 years the way we have in the past.
I am glad to see a company trying to do something about this issue. I'm not thrilled with their solution but even if they fail, perhaps it at least gets people to stop accepting that nothing can be done about it.
You can suppress it though. Public shaming, forced fines, get violent with them... All these things work to certain degree and will get you through the day. But again - you're not solving the problem, you're just suppressing. Stupidity is ultimately unsolvable, because nature; and that is why all those utopic dreams always fail with impressive death counts.
Relying on our schools will educate us out of the problem won’t work. We have too many narcissists and sociopaths in our society, and we spend too much time catering to and rewarding them.
Will any of these work? I don’t know. But this is the way. Not stricter and stricter gatekeeping.
People who have nothing have no reason to care what others think; but people who have everything, and who never experience consequences for what they do, can be just as detached.
Also, if you think about it, this service is fundamentally not meant to serve (or rather, avoid serving) the sorts of people you're picturing. These washrooms likely aren't intended to be placed in low-economic-class areas of cities. Homeless/drug addicts/etc aren't the problem they're intending to filter out. (Why not? Because those groups of people are used to being cronically un-bathroomed, and so have become inured to just finding a corner outside to do their business. See: San Francisco. When things like open port-a-potties are placed in these areas, the homeless ignore those and continue to do what they do.)
Instead, I imagine that these bathrooms would be placed in generally bougie areas – the article cited public parks, but I imagine a major case would be "near food trucks in business districts." And the group they're trying to restrict access to, are "rich assholes who think society exists to serve them, and they owe nothing back."
Consider, after all, the premise: you scan a QR code on your smartphone in order to get access. Who even has a smartphone with an active data plan? Not homeless people. This service is designed to serve exactly the same target audience as e.g. e-bikes/e-scooter rental services.
You might be surprised.
Alternatively flip it around and the toilet scans your QR - this could even be a bit of paper. Ultra low tech.
I'm good with that. It seems easier, and more important, it would work, and you're just singing Kumbaya.
The very fact that we don’t all live in filth now, means that you have to pay a high premium to get someone to choose to be the person whose job constantly exposes them to it.
See also: the profitability of electronics recycling (i.e. picking through piles of scrap for base metal to melt) in the developing vs. developed world. When people live in areas with mounds of trash piled all around them, they’ll dig through that trash for Pennie’s, because they already do thing like shoveling it out of the way every day. When people live in a nice house in a clean city, though, you’ll have to pay them a lot more to touch a scrap heap.
(Or, to put that another way: it’s “but I might get tetanus!” vs. “My base risk of getting tetanus is so high that this job won’t increase my risk by much in relative terms… so sure, why not.”)
Does SF have only a few dozen "poop disasters" a day? The language in this thread suggests the number is higher and the nature is worse than your language would imply, but I wouldn't know as I've only been a tourist there.
Even if "lots" was enough, how much did you earn doing that job? I don't know American politics beyond Team Red vs. Team Blue, are American cities willing to pay for enough cleaners?
If a law is too expensive to enforce justly, maybe we need to reconsider that law.
The only thing stopping it in first world countries is an aversion of democratic oversight of corporations.
i’ve seen some public bathrooms are so mistreated that i don’t know how you pay anyone to clean them. i’d certainly feel awful asking a janitor to clean them without a hazmat suit, a pressure washer and a bag full of tergazyme.
If the problem of where everyone can go is hard, why not at least try to solve the problem of where people willing to pay a lot can go? Lots of empty storefronts in downtown SF right now. $5 or even $10 a go could be cheaper and quicker than buying something I didn’t really want in some restaurant just so I can use their restroom.