What does flushing a toilet actually set in motion? Students at PALO in Piaseczno taking part in the Young Smart Cities project decided to find out — starting with something as ordinary, and as easily overlooked, as the toilet itself.

Within the project, students explored how sewage systems work, why blockages occur, and what role everyday habits play in protecting — or damaging — the wider urban infrastructure. From there, they translated that idea into something concrete: brainstorming as a group, researching how waste disposal affects pipes and treatment plants through the project’s knowledge pills, and writing a script grounded in what they had learned.

What emerged from their work goes beyond pipes and drains. Across two short films, students explore toilet use as a point where private habits meet public consequence — in what we choose to flush, in the materials that quietly clog a city’s arteries, in the costs, environmental and financial, of decisions made behind a bathroom door. Filming scenes, revising their script as new ideas surfaced, and testing whether their message would land with a young audience, they show that responsible sewage use is inseparable from a broader sense of responsibility toward the city we all share.

True to the problem-based learning approach of the project, students were not given a checklist of correct behaviours but a set of open questions — what materials cause the most damage? how do clogged pipes affect a city? how do you explain that clearly, in a way that engages people your own age? — and they worked in groups to answer them in their own way. The result is two videos that are also two arguments: that what happens after we flush is not out of sight, out of mind, and that small decisions at home can have real effects on the health and sustainability of our cities.