Urban Media Archaeology 2010

In honor of World Toilet Day (November 19, apparently) the British household cleaning product company Domestos commissioned designers from Lean Mean Fighting Machine to create Flush Tracker. As the name implies, the site maps the journey of flushed water in real-time, somehow calculating not only distance traveled but the actual speed at which it’s traveling. The site has some major limitations: it’s only up and running in the UK, Ireland, South Africa and (inexplicably) Poland; users can’t specify an address of a block, just their zip code (or local equivalent). Eventually one’s flush ends up in a sewage treatment plant, at which time Flush Tracker sends out an email to notify users that their flush has reached its destination, but that can take ages. The site is intended to raise awareness of the lack of adequate sewage systems in so much of the world, but obviously the places it works have very adequate (and therefore easier to map) sewage systems. Still, it’s fun to play with and check in on at times. My fictional flush in central London has already traveled 1.31 miles in the time it took me to write this post!