Community Chat

[pinkskates4]

From NPR:

Let me guess how you feel about your urine: Get that smelly stuff away from me as fast as possible?

A small group of environmentalists in Vermont isn't as squeamish. Instead of flushing their pee down the drain, they're collecting it with special toilets that separate No. 1 and No. 2.

Then they're pooling the urine of the 170 volunteers in the pilot project (a quart or so, per person, daily) and eventually giving it to a farmer, who's putting it on her hay fields in place of synthetic fertilizer. The goal is to collect 6,000 gallons this year.

The logic driving this avant-garde project of the , based in Brattleboro, Vt., is that it's foolish and wasteful to part with the precious nitrogen and phosphorus that moves from the food we eat right through us — especially when farmers have to buy fertilizer at great expense to put those very same nutrients back into the soil.

What's more, founders tell The Salt, once our urine enters the wastewater system, drinking water carries it to a treatment facility, where the nutrients become pollutants that can contaminate waterways and cause , among other issues.

"One goal is preventing the pollution caused by peeing in water — keeping pee out of the waterways and protecting water quality," says Noe-Hays. "And we can also make agriculture more sustainable and resilient by returning these nutrients to the soil. Urine is an inherently local and renewable source of fertilizer."

The idea of "pee-cycling" has much in common with the "night soil" tradition, as well as the newer practice of using , or sewage sludge that's been transformed into soil amendment for farmers. Several wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. have been making and donating biosolids, which are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, to farmers for years. But the practice is controversial because some activists claim that even certified biosolids could contain harmful chemicals.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/07/31/336564120/should-we-return-the-nutrients-in-our-pee-back...

[Topaz Gem]

Interesting concept...

[------]

I have a friend who uses his poop to fertilize his garden. He treats it so the ""bad stuff"" is destroyed.

Can't say I visit him often though.

[terrier3]

My aunt had a septic system.

A tomato plant actually grew right out of the cover over the trap. It got very large and had many tomatoes, but no one wanted to eat any!

Talk about recycling!!!!

[Marp2]

The use of "biowaste" is not new and is used throughout the U.S. and many other countries for fertilizer, biodiesel fuel and other uses.

There was a recent local news report where a company (or agency) is giving it away to farmers for their fields.

[Puzzle Piece]

There are various drugs and medications/medicine/chemo drugs that are also passed into the urine. How will all that be separated? Waste is waste and I don't feel it should be used for human consumption in any way. I know we have recycled water here in L.A. used for plants and lawns. For me, that's the limit.

[hckynut]

Sounds interesting. Don't let anything go to waste. Now that Toledo has water they can drink, I wonder if they were able to collect enough of that algae to start replacing gasoline in internal combustion engines? Heard some talk about it replacing/reducing our dependency on gasoline and electricity. Hey if algae can fuel 4 cycle internal combustion engines why not pp?

Electric cars have to be recharged and most energy is generated by? And guess what is happening to those that produce this vast quantity!