If it's Brown, Flush it Down, 1985, by Marshall Poe

From MemoryArchive

Who: Marshall Poe
What: An odd California custom
When: 1985
Where: Berkeley, CA

In 1985 I moved to Berkeley to go to grad school. Since there was no place to live (the town was full up--students were living in cars), I ended up living in a coop called "PAX House." PAX House was a kind of hippyish place, where everyone was supposed to love everyone else, no matter how irresponsible they might be. Actually, living there was a blast and most all the folks in residence were very interesting. I'd go into it, but it would take a while. Suffice to say that there was much diversity, well balanced by a certain PC conformity (which is what you would expect in mid-80s Berkeley).

One of the weirdest thing I encountered was the slogan "If it's brown, flush it down;if it's yellow let it mellow," to wit, if you take a shit, flush it; but if you pee, leave it. The idea was that frequent flushing wasted water, which in turn killed trees, which in turn left you nothing to hug if you were a tree hugger. Pretty much everyone was a tree hugger in those days. So, if you peed in PAX house, the custom was not to flush. ("If it's pee, let it be"--I just made that up.) But if you took a crap, you were allowed to flush it. ("If it's shit, away with it"--ditto).

I found this very bizarre, but I did it all the same.