In the early 1990s, Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport introduced pictures of flies on its men's room urinals in an effort to reduce "spillage," or the amount of urine which spills onto the floor and must then be cleaned. All the urinals at Schiphol have one, and the fly is always in the same position, just above the drain and a bit off to the left.
Though sometimes credited to Aad Kieboom, a manager at the airport, according to Kieboom it was the cleaning department's manager, Jos van Bedaf, who had the idea. Van Bedaf had remembered, during his time as a soldier in 1960s, that someone had drawn a dot in one of the urinals, and that the latrine with that urinal was cleaner than others. He suggested a fly because, he said, it is the animal people would most like to urinate on. Flies connote unsanitary conditions and are both widely disliked without being frightening like some other disliked insects e.g. spiders.
They have been installed in urinals at airports, stadiums and schools in many places around the world, including New York's JFK Terminal 4.
Employees of Schiphol Airport conducted trials to test how effective their etched images of flies were. The result was an 80% reduction in spillage, cutting cleaning costs by about 8%.
While the flies in the Schiphol Airport urinals are etched, they can also be baked into the porcelain or stuck on as a sticker afterwards. While flies and bees are well-known, targets can also take the form of written words, a dot, a flag or a tree. There's an enterprising online store based in Colorado that has introduced all manner of images upon which men can train their streams of urine: campfires, golf flags, targets … and even (for whatever reason) US President Joe Biden.
Some urinals at the University of Louisville use a logo of the school's rival, the University of Kentucky; and in Iceland, some urinals displayed pictures of bankers during the 2008-11 financial crisis.
Nobel Prize winning behavioural economist Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein included urinal targets as an example of what they call "nudging" in their 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness. According to nudge theory, positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions can influence the behaviour and decision-making of groups or individuals in predictable ways, without using rigid rules. Thaler called it his favourite example of a nudge. Thaler and Sunstein wrote that "It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess, but if they see a target, attention and therefore accuracy are much increased.”
But the urinal fly idea is not completely new. A Victorian urinal target dating back at least as far as the 1880s features a bee. The Latin for bee is apis, a vulgar joke understandable to Victorian gentlemen, but almost certainly lost on 21st century men. Even so, Kieboom says that he was not previously aware of any of the Victorian bee before putting forward the idea of the fly to Schiphol’s management.
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Story Idea: Scott Stowell
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References
wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinal_target
worksthatwork.com/1/urinal-fly
bendbulletin.com/nation/how-the-invention-of-a-urinal-fly-helped-lead-to-a-nobel-prize
newseu.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-10/Nudge-How-behavioural-science-is-subtly-influencing-us-amid-COVID-19
urinalfly.com
Images
1. Urinal Fly. Credit: UrinalFly.com
2. Schiphol Airport. Credit: Amsterdam Airport
3. Urinal Fly
4 & 5. Urinal Flies. Credit: worksthatwork.com/1/urinal-fly
6. Urinal Sticker Selection at urinalfly.com
7. Victorian urinal target from the 1880s. Photo: Thomas Crapper & Co.
