These uncertain times bring with them a number of difficult choices, and an iconic plumbing manufacturer’s principles have led them to drastically alter their business practices: Kohler has announced that they no longer feel comfortable bringing toilets into our dying world.
We can definitely understand not wanting to make toilets when the future looks so grim.
As forests burn and oceans rise at unprecedented rates, Kohler has come to the sobering conclusion that a safe, sustainable existence has ceased to be something they can guarantee for the toilets they manufacture. Accordingly, the Wisconsin-based company declared in a press conference today that they will halt production of all Kohler toilets effective immediately, refusing to subject any more innocent toilets to the looming horrors of climate collapse. While Kohler doesn’t begrudge anyone else’s decision to make new toilets while crops fail and systems crumble, their own sense of right and wrong is unambiguous: for them to continue producing toilets at a moment threatening untold global suffering would be to sin against those toilets unforgivably.
“I saw a photo on the news of a helpless little toilet sitting bowl-deep in raging floodwaters, and I just looked over at my own toilet and started crying,” said fourth-generation company leader David Kohler, lamenting that governments have so far failed to act with the level of urgency that the crises endangering earth’s toilets demand. “What happens if extreme storms knock out the water main my toilet needs to flush? What happens if a new gastrointestinal disease breaks out and people start taking dumps it was never designed to handle? What happens if its Quiet-Close™ lid malfunctions during a heatwave and I can’t get it the part it needs to get better because the roads are too hot to drive on? What then? If I’m not sure I can provide a good life for the toilets already here, it seems insane to just keep churning out new ones like nothing’s happening.”
We’d already decided not to manufacture toilets for personal reasons, but this must have been a truly heart-wrenching decision for Kohler to make.
While some have warned that declining rates of toilet production could eventually result in a critical shortage of places to shit, Kohler maintains that holding toilets that haven’t even been made yet responsible for solving problems we created is injustice, plain and simple. “We owe our toilets a future with boldly designed bathrooms and high-fiber diets, not wildfires and mass extinction,” said the distraught CEO as his voice began to quaver. “Until we take meaningful action to change our planet’s perilous course, Kohler’s showrooms will sit quiet and empty.”
Agree or disagree, you’ve got to admire Kohler’s conviction here. Kudos to them for listening to their conscience and refusing to burden additional toilets with an ever-darkening future!
