AfroReggae
Electric Pee
Agency: J. Walter Thompson São Paulo
Role: Digital Producer
You may know Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival for being Brazil’s famous festival and host to dazzling costumes, floats and entertainment. You may know it less for being the country’s worst public sanitation nightmare. Considered the world’s largest carnival, the event draws two million people each day to the streets of Rio to laugh, to dance, to revel, and to pee.
Each year, Carnival enthusiasts end up using the streets of Rio de Janeiro as a bathroom, leaving behind an unsightly and smelly mess. The situation is so serious that, since last year, authorities have begun to detain people found urinating in public and have invested heavily in public awareness campaigns.
JWT Brazil and NGO AfroReggae teamed up this year to do something about it. The result is the “Electric Pee” project—a unique urinal designed to generate electric energy from urine. Using a process similar to a hydroelectric power plant, which uses flowing water to generate energy, the energy created from each use will help generate power for AfroReggae’s float at Carnival.
The project is aimed at encouraging people to stop using the streets of Rio as a bathroom, offering a great incentive. The idea combines innovation and citizenship to raise awareness of an important cause. The result? Cleaner streets and more entertainment for everyone involved!
Green Power Book - Japan
