Which way is up?

Behold: The Two-Tier Toilet.

I recently encountered this revelation in an East Side coffee shop. The company that owns this shop takes great pride in touting its environmental ethic. Good for it - environmentalism works best when coupled with sound economics.

Back to the toilet. Please note that the name I tagged it with has nothing to do with the height of the unit. It doesn't refer to some strange configuration that has one part stacked atop another. And, it most certainly doesn't relate to any design that would be preferred by someone like Larry Craig (he of the "wide stance" - remember?)

No, this one is much simpler. Ready?

Up for liquid wastes. Down for solid wastes. It's what the sign reads.

The toilet had a flush lever at its rear (no pun intended) like many commonly found in public restrooms. Most of the time you just reflexively push it down - it's what the design seems to dictate. Now, when encountering a Two-Tier Toilet, you need to think about it.

The design focuses on saving water. Clearly it takes less water to flush when the bowl liquid is merely stained a different color. Some hardcore "greenies" will insist that one shouldn't even flush at all in this scenario.

More water is needed for, as a business contact called it, "the big flush." Never heard any arguments against that one.

The intentions of the Two-Tier Toilet are good. We should strive to use water wisely. Here in the Midwest, living alongside the largest freshwater source in the world (the Great Lakes), we are far too cavalier about water use. It's easy to forget that many parts of the U.S. suffer long droughts with regularity.

On an international scale, many futurists have predicted that wars will eventually be fought not over oil, but over water. People can live to a certain extent without oil. People can't live without water.

So maybe the Two-Tier Toilet is onto something. Maybe this design - and its accompanying explanatory signs - will soon appear in other places besides this particular coffee shop. It can be a conversation starter if nothing else.

But here's where the Two-Tier Toilet falls short. It doesn't account for human curiousity. You see, I had to know the difference between the water levels in the two flushes. So I flushed it first up, and then again down. In the process, I used twice as much water as needed and completely obviated the admirable goal of the Two-Tier Toilet. And I doubt I'm the only one to do this.

Like most guys faced with this particular toilet design - i.e., a flush lever - I used my foot to initiate the flush. Touch it with a hand? Surely you jest. That would require a twice-as-long period for the obligatory washing afterward. We don't want to waste water, do we?