One wouldn’t consider Battleboro, a picturesque town in Vermont, the host of a sporting event. Contest “piss off!”. 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 IncludesAll 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 a way to recycle.”
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 is working on a system that can also be used in buildings to expand the program.
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 setThis is 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 Soaring pricesSince 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 SIMHA, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
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 has developed a way for pee to be turned 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 increases dramatically in countries such as Uganda and Ethiopia, where there are large populations to provide urine but no synthetic fertilizer is used due to its high cost.
From liquid gold to dry fertiler
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, an SLU spin-off, is based in Gotland and equips toilets using cassettes that alkalize urine. The process allows the nutrients it contains to remain stable while a fan evaporates the water, leaving behind a dry powder.
“There is a lot of complicated chemistry behind how it got there, but 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. The fertilizer it collects goes directly to the local community. Barley cropsSimha, after tasting the beer made from this barley, stated that it was “exactly like any other beer”
In Malmo, Sweden, a Laufen toilet has been installed that uses Sanitation 360’s technology for drying the urine.
If urine fertilizer wants to be mainstreamed, it must be able to compete with synthetic fertilizers that are mass-produced. That involves getting it certified by national regulators as some parts of the world still label urine separated at source as sewage. It also means making the equipment and technologies widely available. The essential piece of the puzzle is the urinary-diverting bathroom.
Separate before recycling
If we want pee to be used as fertilizer, it should be separated from our feces. separate recyclables like plasticFrom our other trash.
You can choose to use a flush or dry toilet that diverts urine. These toilets collect liquid waste from the toilet bowl and place it in a special container. These models were actually first developed as a way to reduce water pollution. While urine is only 1% in wastewater from European treatment plants and it is the main source of nutrients such as nitrogen, it accounts for over 80% of European wastewater. pollute and damage rivers and lakes.
Urine diverting toilets can be used to collect pee at the source
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 stated that if you don’t extract gold from wastewater, instead of recycling it into industry you’re just throwing it out.”
A developing technology
One of the biggest challenges in urine-diverting has been so far toilets has been that they are considered impractical to use and produce, according to Larsen. Larsen says that a new model developed by Laufen and Eawag in Switzerland could change this.
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 is designed to clean the surface with very little water. 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
