Hamburg walls are coated with “splashback” paint to punish public peeing

An ingenious community campaign punishes visitors who relieve themselves on the neighbourhood's streets.

The people of St Pauli in Hamburg have grown so tired of drunken visitors urinating on the streets of their district that they have taken ingenious measures to discourage the antisocial behaviour.

St Pauli’s Community of Interest has sprayed the most-frequented walls in their area with a super-hydrophobic coating. The paint is so water-repellent that liquid splashes off the surface in the direction from which it came — those ignoring the warning signs will suffer from what the group has charmingly titled ‘peeback.’

Last year, we wrote about the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority installing urine sensors in the elevators of the city’s stations that alert nearby police officers when people relieved themselves in public. But St Pauli’s campaign has the benefit of being both more affordable and infinitely more amusing. Could the initiative be replicated in other party cities?