Human Pee Can Be Used As An Effective Fertiliser, Researchers Say

Human urine can be used as an effective – and free – fertiliser, according to some top scientists

OK, you’ll have to bear with us on this one, because it’s not something that a lot of people are going to want to do, but apparently you could be flushing a load of perfectly good plant food away down the toilet several times every single day.

Studies have shown that wee has plenty of nutrients in it, making it a good fertiliser, as well as being completely free and totally renewable.

Studies have shown that it is both safe and effective as a fertiliser, as well as being a great substitute for chemical fertilisers, meaning that it could have a positive environmental effect as well.

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Abraham Noe-Hayes, from the Rich Earth Institute, told USA Today: "If you save all the urine that you produce in a day, there's enough fertiliser in there to grow all the wheat that you need to make a loaf of bread,

"It's a huge amount of nutrients, and it could grow a significant portion of our dietary needs just from the nutrients in our urine.”

Noe-Hayes’ institute, based in Vermont, is running the USA’s first community-scale urine recycling programme, which sounds like pretty horrible work but it could be seriously useful.

They are conducting research on how effective p*** is in replacing chemicals in crop growth, employing methods that include collecting urine through diverting toilets that keep pee separate from poo.

In your wee, there’s a load of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, all of which are good for plants and are found in synthetic fertilisers.

However, they become a pollutant when sent into the wastewater system, because they aren’t removed by the current infrastructure, meaning they can cause damaging algal blooms.

Chemical fertilisers cause harmful global emissions – and a lot of them – so getting rid of that could be great for the planet.

Noe-Hayes continued: “[Urine is] sustainable because we make it all the time. We can't stop making it and it has to go somewhere. So why not have it go where it's useful?"

Why indeed?

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If they’re going to make this particular innovation stick, Noe-Hayes reckons ‘it has to be with fixtures that people are familiar with and comfortable using’.

He explained: “We have to have a commercially available product for processing it and turning it into a usable fertiliser.”

Currently, the institute’s spin-off company Rich Earth LLC is looking into ways to create such a product.

It’s going to take a while to develop the systems and the technology, but the scientists are clearly hopeful.

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