One wouldn’t consider Battleboro, a picturesque town in Vermont, the host of a sporting event. “Piss Off” contest. Each year, about 200 people compete to see who has collected the most urine in order to win a cup with a gold-plated lid. And, most importantly, to fertilize the crops.
The event is organized by the Rich Earth Institute, a local non-profit that pasteurizes donated pee and supplies it to farms to use instead of synthetic fertilizer. Urine This containsAll of these nutrients, which are essential for plants to grow, are often flushed away.
That’s why the institute has retrofitted most of its volunteers’ homes with toilets that separate urine at the source so it can later be pumped out and transported where it’s needed.
“[The volunteers] take a lot of pride in what they’re doing,” said Abraham Noe-Hays, the organization’s research director. They see it as another method of recycling.”
Around 200 volunteers donate their urine in order to fertilize local farms.
Pee makes food systems more resilient
Turning pee into fertilizer isn’t restricted to this community. Rich Earth’s spinoff company, Rich Earth, is developing a system for use in buildings that can be expanded to extend the program to other locations.
Further afield Countries like Sweden, France, Germany, South Africa and Australia other organizations are working to repurpose human waste in a bid to reduce reliance on commercial fertilizers, which have their own setOf environmental and economic challenges.
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers pollute groundwater and are a significant driver of Climate change Production and use of such fertilizers accounts for 2.4% of global emissions, According to a study done in 2021.
Global phosphorus reserves also are shrinking. And farmers around the world have been facing shortages and Prices soaringSince Russia invaded Ukraine, it has been a major exporter of fertilizer.
Scientists have used human waste resources for years to reduce import dependence, says Prithvi Sinha, a researcher at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
How can we grow food when there is a shock in the supply chain? He stated that urine recycling can help increase the resilience of our food system.
Sanitation 360 created a way to turn pee into dry fertilizer
Simha estimates that around a third (33%) of all global nitrogen and phosphorus could be replaced with nutrients from urine. This percentage is much higher in countries like Uganda and Ethiopia where there is a large supply of urine. However, synthetic fertilizer is not used as it is too costly.
From liquid gold and dry fertilizer
Simha is part a group of researchers who have developed a way for urine to be converted into a smaller amount of solid fertilizer. It behaves and looks similar to the synthetic pellets that most farmers use.
Sanitation 360 is a spin-off of the SLU and is located on Gotland in Sweden. It equips toilets with cassettes to alkalize urine. The process allows the nutrients it contains to remain stable while a fan evaporates the water, leaving behind a dry powder.
“While there is a lot of complicated chemistry behind how it got there, it’s actually quite simple to implement. Simha stated that it works well in both the Global North as the Global South.
Sanitation 360 has been partnering with a company that rents mobile toilets. It scaled up its urine collection from 1,500 liters (396 gallons) to 25,000 liters, and, next year, it is aiming for 250,000 liters. It donates the fertilizer it collects to local organizations. Barley cropsSimha, after tasting the beer made from this barley, stated that it was “exactly like any other beer”
Malmo, Sweden has a Laufen toilet that uses Sanitation 360 technology to dry the urine.
If urine fertilizer is going to be mainstream, it must be able compete with mass-produced synthetic fertilizers. That involves getting it certified by national regulators as some parts of the world still label urine separated at source as sewage. It also involves making the technology and equipment available to all. The key piece of the puzzle is the urine-diverting toilet.
Separate before recycling
If we want pee to be used as fertilizer, it should be separated from our feces. separate recyclables like plasticYou can also find other trash.
The flush and dry types of urine diverting toilets are available. They collect the liquid waste in a special basin located at the front of your toilet bowl. These models were actually first developed as a way to reduce water pollution. Although urine makes up only 1% of the wastewater in European treatment plants it is one of many main sources of nutrients such as nitrogen. pollute and damage rivers and lakes.
To collect urine at the source, diverting toilets are key.
Tove Larsen, a senior scientist at Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, states that it is easy to repurpose the urine from the source into fertilizer.
She said, “Alternatively you’re extracting the gold from your wastewater and instead recycling it into industries, you’re just throwing away it.”
A developing technology
The main problem with urine-diverting is still unsolved. toilets has been that they are considered impractical to use and produce, according to Larsen. She says that a new model, developed and manufactured by Eawag and Laufen in Switzerland, could change all of that.
This model uses the “teapot effect.” The plateau at the front of the bowl is manufactured in a way that allows the pee to trickle into a separate hole similar to when tea trickles down the outside of the pot when poured at an awkward angle.
The flush can be used with very little water to clean the surface, but enough to remove any odors. Larsen says the main advantage of these new models are that they can be used and made like any other ceramic toilet.
They are currently limited to a handful of buildings around the globe. However, scientists believe that eventually, recycling “liquid gold”, as they are called, will be as simple for everyone to do as sitting down and peeing.
Edited By: Jennifer Collins
