Ladies, I know this may come as a huge surprise to some of you, but ... a lot of guys don’t wash their hands after finishing their business in a public bathroom. It’s true. In order to give such characters less of an excuse for not washing after peeing, a Latvian company known as Stand is now offering a combination sink and urinal. Appropriately enough, it’s called the Tandem.
Looking at the wall-mounted device, one could be forgiven for thinking that it’s designed to let today’s busy multi-taskers get two things done at once ... but that wouldn’t make sense, not in this case. Instead, the idea is that users will have a sink right there in front of them when they’ve finished widdling. That way, they can’t “forget” to wash their hands, as they might do while making the long trek from a conventional urinal to a separate sink.
On the more practical side, the Tandem saves water by reusing the hand-washing water to rinse out the urinal. Presumably it could also allow bathrooms to be more compact and less expensive to build, as it replaces two appliances with one, and thus requires half as much plumbing to be installed.
The Tandem was created by designer Kaspar Jursons. According to a report on PSFK, it’s currently being manufactured on a small scale, is priced at US$590 per unit, and has already found buyers in Norway, Germany, Russia, Poland, and Latvia.
There will be still be a need for the sink in the men room since not every guy goes in to urinate some need to have a bowel movement.
I do think it could increase the number of men who wash their hands after usage.
BigWarpGuy, There's no reason guys who do #2 can't still use one of these just to wash hands. Other than maybe having to wait for one to free up.
I'm convinced that this thing was designed by one who pees sitting down...
I don't think this will change the attitudes of non handwashers. It will still be too much effort for them to wash their hands after urinating, or worse, doing a 'number two'.
One problem in the UK is that far more often than not, there will be ample sinks provided (many with empty soap dispensers) but far fewer electric hand dryers- many of which won't start until the user has discovered where on the underside the sensor is before the damn thing starts working, and smaller facilities often have such feeble dryers that they are a waste of time anyway. When in a rush this means that many users have to wipe their hands on their trousers rather than queueing or holding up those behind.