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Comment by dpassens | Hacker News Reader

Why not just flush the toilet paper?

Much of the world is like this. Even in some advanced places, so I'm always on the lookout for the tp trash can to make sure I'm not going to damage their pipes by flushing when I visit a new area.

Greece is also like this. I think it’s wild. It’d be okay if they had bidets, but they don’t.

Portugal, too, and that's Western Europe.

Does it? I've only been to Portugal a couple times (Lisbon and Porto) and houses had bidets (standalone), while bathrooms didn't, but didn't have tp buckets either.

Depends on the age of the building and the locations seeer system. Newer sewers and buildings can cope but older ones can’t.

Then there’s cultural expectations - if you have a country where you have gone decades of your life never flushing you will be expecting a bin even if the pipes don’t need one.

If you are staying in western hotels in major cities you will have a different experience than staying in private homes in villages.

In China at least, toilet paper wasn’t soluable for a long time and sewer plumbing wasn’t up to standard, so you used the waste basket for your TP. You would also bring your own TP to public bathrooms and they had no idea if your TP was soluable or not (lots of cheaper kinds aren’t). These days, toilet paper is universally soluable and plumbing is much better, you can totally flush it (and I always do when I’m there) but so many people grew up being told not to that they still have and use waste baskets.

they lack the plumbing architecture for this.

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