Drip, Drop, Flush
A quick-and-dirty tour of the history and politics of poop
Nova Scotia journalist Lezlie Lowe has traveled around the world exploring the past and present of the humble public loo. This month, Julian Sterling presents an exclusive excerpt from her new book, No Place To Go, available now from Coach House Books.
Someone wipes her bottom, drops a pre-moistened flushable wipe into the toilet bowl, and watches the swirling mess sloosh south. In a restaurant down the street, an employee pours the dregs of a kettle of fryer oil into a sink drain and watches the warm, lardish goo go.
We treat our pipes like magic portals. We believe that once something disappears down the drain, it ceases to exist. But our waste infrastructure, an aging patchwork of colonial-era innovation and modern crisis, tells a different story. From the Victorian "Great Stink" to the modern nightmare of the "fatberg," the history of our plumbing is the history of our civilization.