I’ll share mine first.
I had a psych patient one night pile shitty toilet paper next to his toilet overnight. Normally my psych nurse brain would consider this a symptom of disorganized psychosis, EXCEPT!
I remembered an aita post about a conflict between a western OP and his middle eastern roomate trying to figure out why their roommate put their shitty toilet paper in the trash. Turns out many middle eastern toilets can’t handle toilet paper.
Oh and inpatient psychiatry doesn’t provide freestanding hard plastic trashcans (turns out they make great clubs). We gave him one of our freestanding paper bag trashcans and problem solved.
TL;DR; Reddit expanded my cultural knowledge enough to differentiate disorganized psychotic behaviors from a genuine cultural difference. Thanks reddit!
Anyone have any similar examples of positive exchanges of knowledge or culture using reddit?
It’s more about toilet paper than plumbing. Toilet paper has to easily dissolve in water, otherwise you can clog any toilet, be it western or eastern.
This is why flushing wipes is bad
It can also be a septic system issue. A lot of septic systems either need specific TP, so it doesn’t mess up the system, or no TP to be flushed so that the system can work properly.
In cities (anywhere with a sewer system), generally this isn’t a big deal. Most North Americans have grown up in cities that were built after indoor plumbing and municipal sewer systems became a thing. So the system was built to be robust. However, many homes in Europe are older than indoor plumbing, and were adapted for it when plumbing became a more consumer-viable product. This is also why the hot/cold on European faucets is separate. The hot water was usually non-potable, while the cold was generally fine, due to early water heater systems not being sealed, and the exposure to external stuff and warm temperatures made it a very nice place for bacteria and other things to grow… So the hot water was generally not safe for consumption, while cold was generally fine. So the hot and cold were usually separated to keep the bad things festering in the hot water, from getting into the cold water.
The history of all of this is actually rather fascinating to me… Needless to say, there’s a lot of good reasoning that’s not necessarily still relevant, for why things are the way they are.