Anna Pedersen

It's Electric!

Electric pee in Rio de Janeiro

Every year the city of Rio de Janeiro has to deal with the same reoccurring problem. The many people at the Carnival pee in the streets. With this in mind, AfroReggae and JWT came up with a way to encourage people to pee elsewhere.

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Xixi Elétrico urinals - Two urinals from the AfroReggae and J. Walter Thompson collaboration Xixi Eléctrico J. Walter Thompson, AfroReggae

Since 2012, the Brazilian authorities have been taking action against their public peeing by investing heavily in proactive awareness campaigns and they have even resorted to detain people caught peeing out of place.
In 2013, AfroReggae and JWT came up with an alternate solution - a way to harness and utilize the potential energy contained and produced by the urine. Literally. The "Xixi Eléctrico"(Electric Pee)-project is a special kind of urinal that uses the steady flow of urine to move a dynamo, and thus charging the batteries that powers AfroReggae's Carnival truck.
In other words: The more people peed in the right place, the longer the music and the party lasted.