Paris mayor moves to stop public urinating

The mayor of Paris has launched one of his toughest battles to date: weaning French men off their penchant for urinating in public places.

The tradition is one of the less picturesque sights met by many Britons travelling to France, the land of the pissoir.

Lampposts and road signs often prove useful stopping off points, while Paris metro users are subjected to appalling odours.



But Bertrand Delanoë, who has made environmental improvements a priority for the city, has now set his sights on cleaning up the act of Parisians caught short in public.

The city's hygiene workers have to clean an average 56,000 sq metres of urine-splashed surfaces per month — a figure that rises to 65,000 in summer.

Now, however, authorities believe they may have come up with the answer: le mur anti-pipi. This brilliant, yet simple invention is an undulating wall that fires urine back in the direction of the offender. Officials said that another prototype on trial was a sloping granite "parapet" around parks that sprayed urine back on to culprits and was difficult to stand on, "particularly after the third beer".