Urine has lots of nitrogen and phosphorus—a problem as waste, great as fertilizer:
Removing urine from wastewater and using it as fertilizer has the potential to decrease nutrient loading in water bodies and boost sustainability by making use of a common waste material.
In excess, nitrogen and phosphorus in our waste streams can stimulate algal blooms and create conditions dangerous to marine and lake ecosystems and human health. According to the website of the Rich Earth Institute, a Vermont-based company focused on using human waste as a resource, most of the nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater comes from human urine, even though it makes up only 1 percent of wastewater. Removing urine could remove 75 percent of the nitrogen and 55 percent of the phosphorus from municipal wastewater treatment plants. And those nutrients could then be recycled for use as fertilizer.
[...] If it can be separated, urine can act to partly sterilize itself. The nitrogen in urine leaves the body as urea, a simple organic compound. Bacteria in pipes typically break down urea into ammonia. When urine is sitting in a container, the ammonia raises the pH of the solution to about eight or nine. The high pH environment kills any pathogens from the body that might have entered the urine, Vinnerås said.
“It’s like a Twinkie,” Noe-Hays said, referring to urine’s long shelf-life.
[...] Gardeners often use urine as fertilizer, and Noe-Hays said it works wonders from his personal experience. Noe-Hays said there is no necessary concentration of nutrients for urine to be used as fertilizer. The mass of its components is what matters. If pouring 1,000 gallons of urine on an acre, there are about 50 pounds of nitrogen added. Using a concentrate 10 times stronger than diluted urine, only 100 gallons would need to be applied to get the same impact, Noe-Hays said. “The hay doesn’t care whether you’re applying the concentrate or the dilute,” he continued. “It just matters how many total pounds of fertilizer it gets.”
[...] Water has been a big focus in the realm of climate change concerns, and Broaddus sees more people getting interested in small wastewater treatment options and a circular water economy. Wastewater has so much to offer—energy, nutrients, and information—and the more people can understand the system, the smaller it can get, Broaddus said.
Urine diversion fits into a circular water economy by connecting some of the dots. The water people drink and excrete may come back around to fertilize the vegetables prepped for a salad. For it to be more widely accepted by gardeners and farmers alike, shifts in both mentality and plumbing are important next steps.
Related Stories
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A common chemical found in urine can be used to kick-start large-scale production of proteins such as hormones and antibodies used by biotech companies.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham and Aston University, in the U.K., have developed a system that uses urea to trigger the production of these proteins in the large quantities needed by the biotech industry.
Typically, in this process, small pieces of DNA are introduced into bacteria such as E.coli to persuade them to overproduce certain proteins. It is a well-understood technology that was first developed in the 1970s. Overproduction, however, is typically triggered by "inducer" molecules, which can be costly, and often need careful handling, such as refrigeration.
By using urea instead, the researchers have developed a method that is cheaper, more straightforward, and uses easily accessible materials.
[...] The study builds on earlier work in which the team successfully demonstrated that nitrate, a cheap, stable and abundant inorganic ion, could also be used as a trigger. Nitrate is commonly found in many commercial fertilizers and even in some garden fertilizers, meaning that it is always readily available, even in areas where other types of promoter chemicals might be inaccessible.
Co-author Dr. Joanne Hothersall, also in the School of Biosciences, added, "Both urea and nitrate will be much more readily available, and easy to use, in locations where infrastructure limits access, for example where maintaining a cold supply chain is challenging. We hope these new approaches will open up new avenues of research for biotech industries."
A versatile substance indeed:
Should We be Trying to Create a Circular Urine Economy?
In Space, Pee Is for Power
World's First Biobricks Grown from Human Urine
Testing the Use of Human Urine as a Natural Fertilizer for Crops
Geopolymer Concrete: Building Moon Bases with Astronaut Urine and Regolith
Journal Reference:
Joanne Hothersall, Alexander Osgerby, Rita E. Godfrey, et al. New vectors for urea-inducible recombinant protein production, New Biotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.nbt.2022.10.003
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 22 2022, @09:33PM (4 children)
NO! Pee-cycling!
Add it to your compost, or dilute and add to garden in fall (not sure about adding to growing veggies).
Lots 'o goodies in dat pee, ya-boy!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by ls671 on Tuesday August 23 2022, @04:23AM
A guy told be that he pees on in marijuana plant every morning when he gets up. He didn't say anything about his "growing vegetables" although so I guess I can't help you with that.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2022, @05:39AM (1 child)
Golden shower?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2022, @06:40PM
More like frosty piss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2022, @11:16AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine_therapy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Monday August 22 2022, @09:40PM (7 children)
So we need separate pipes for feces and urine? Doubling existing infrastructure is not a tweak.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2022, @09:53PM (6 children)
Something similar was proposed when I was an architecture student (in the "building technology" section) c.1975. The exercise was to "do something" for areas that were experiencing water shortages/rationing.
In that case it was to separate wash water (gray water) from toilet water (black water). The gray water can often be reused for non-consumption (watering the lawn, flushing toilets) directly.
However, the extra plumbing required made this a complete non-starter for all but the most hardcore hippies building their own houses. And unless they were in a very rural area it probably involved violating existing building codes as well.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2022, @10:02PM (5 children)
replying to myself -- forgot to add that I effectively separated the two waste streams for the 2 years I owned a small motorhome. It had a toilet in the back. The previous owner mentioned that he and his wife were careful to only pee in the toilet. Thus the holding tank never had any shit in it. He pointed out that once you get any shit in the tank the odor (when emptying, and possibly leaking up to the bathroom area) will never go away. I guess he had previous experience with another mobile toilet.
I followed his advice and saved all my shits on the road for rest stops or restaurants, keeping the holding tank shit-free. It was a small nuisance, but my tank contents never smelled terrible, and probably would have made good fertilizer! Once, I could not find a campground with a dump station, used a very rural ditch alongside a small road. So I did a little fertilizing somewhere in the middle of Kansas.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2022, @10:21PM (1 child)
I suppose there are worse things you could have done [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2022, @11:11PM
Hmmm, 800 pounds - that's about 100 gallons (~350 liters), that's a big holding tank. They do come that big, so I guess it's possible, see http://www.busrvparts.com/Holding_Tanks.htm#Holding_tanks_sizes [busrvparts.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday August 22 2022, @11:45PM (1 child)
This looks like a good place to drop this little gem...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gGwikODs6ik [youtube.com]
Enjoy, but NSFW.
It's a song about a lady fertilizing her cabbage garden in the manner we are discussing.
Yeh, we had our little Madonna's too, just barely skirting by the censors of the day.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 23 2022, @03:41PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 23 2022, @01:44AM
So I guess RV tech has advanced to the point where it can handle feces.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday August 22 2022, @09:53PM (6 children)
Timeline: late 70s/early 80s.
My second story living room window looked over a broken down something (house?), whatever, big open area with an old decaying building on it. One evening I got home from work, looked out the window, and there were 4-5 teenage boys doing a circle jerk to magazines. By circle jerk I mean one hand was jerking the boy next to him while the other hand flipped through a magazine.
I did what you expect. I watched where they hid the magazines and, next morning before going to work, went in and stole them.
Actually managed to watch them looking for the magazines, funny as hell. Did I feel ashamed? Oh hell no. Remember, I was only 2-3 years older than them. And pr0n was expensive, like $4.50 per magazine where MAD was still $0.35 per issue.
I, um, tossed the magazines into the trash to be incinerated next cycle. Yeah, that's my story, I'm sticking to it until I met my wife to be.
Another fun story from that apartment. They built apartments on that lot. I was practicing pulling a trigger on my unloaded rifle while looking through the scope to get rid of flinch. One night I'm scoping out a door on the new apartment complex, the door opens, and some girl is in my crosshairs. She screams, I drop the rifle, and I never again used that door to work on my flinch.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday August 22 2022, @09:59PM (4 children)
And, after posting, I have no idea why I thought this story was relevant to the thread. I guess I'm getting old and want to put my youthful stories out there to be archived.
That said, it was only a .22 rifle with a 4x scope, but I will never forget that girl's face when she opened the door and saw my rifle pointed right at her. I've been very careful where I point my rifle ever since.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2022, @10:06PM
> I have no idea why I thought this story was relevant to the thread.
We can help! For example, maybe that girl peed her pants....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2022, @10:12PM
> I have no idea why I thought this story was relevant to the thread.
You saw the word "circular" and it brought up a mammary ... I mean memory.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by krishnoid on Monday August 22 2022, @11:47PM
Maybe because when you saw the look on that girl's face, you realize she'd just peed herself?
(Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Tuesday August 23 2022, @08:50AM
Maybe you are juxtaposing rifle with gun...
This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 23 2022, @01:45AM
I saw what you did there.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday August 22 2022, @10:36PM (1 child)
There was a story recently, sorry I couldn't find it again to add a link, that talked about a Dairy farmer who was allowed to use treated waste water as fertilizer for his pastures.
At first the farmer was very grateful, then it was discovered that the water was contaminated with PFAS, Per- and Polyfluorinated Substances, that people had been flushing down the drains. The thing about PFASs is that they are resistant to break down under normal circumstances and are generally referred to as "forever chemicals".
Since they were in the water the grass absorbed them, and then the cows ate the grass and the PFAS accumulated in the cows to the point that their milk could no longer be sold.
While the concept behind the idea proposed by the article is sound and could be good for the environment it also has some potential dangers that will need to be addressed. PFAS being just one of many.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday August 23 2022, @08:35PM
Treated waste water used to be discharged in to our local surface water. As gross as this sounds, it's generally safe because it ultimately flows to the ocean. As they say, "the solution to pollution is dilution". In your story the toxins got concentrated instead.
So where does our waste water go now? Some of it goes in to the Geysers Geothermal Plant in NorCal, to make steam. Things are presumably getting concentrated there now, but deep in a geothermal hot spot where it will probably never be a real problem.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dwilson98052 on Tuesday August 23 2022, @01:16AM (1 child)
....finding a way to remove the left over drugs and medications from the waste so that people are getting high or getting firmer breasts from eating vegetables.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 23 2022, @01:44AM
This. The amount of medication in wastewater is surprisingly high. We'd need some safety testing to understand the possible impact before using human urine in agriculture on a large scale.
Alternately we could extract the desired nutrients. I'm ignorant of what that would look like. Thinking it through, even non-medicated urine would require some processing to remove salt, or it would accumulate and become toxic to the plant
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday August 23 2022, @08:52AM (3 children)
When I piss on your grave, is that a good thing now?
After all it helps the flowers bloom
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2022, @02:30PM (2 children)
Maybe in the Dune world where spitting is semi-sacred? I don't recall urine appearing in the Frank Herbert masterpiece...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 23 2022, @03:14PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by stretch611 on Tuesday August 23 2022, @06:01PM
That is part of what made stillsuits [fandom.com] special.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 23 2022, @09:01PM (1 child)
Of course we should use urine as fertilizer. If we're worried about growing enough food because global supply chains for fertilizer have been disrupted, it would be foolish not to.
I use it on non-food parts of our garden. It's excellent for plant growth.
Theoretically we should be able to use all our excrement, but that's a higher threshold for most people.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2022, @10:34PM
> I use it on non-food parts of our garden.
Let me guess, you have a high privacy fence around your yard...and you also keep a good lookout for drones...
...
...
Before you start pissing on the flowers!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2022, @02:09AM
They use it for DEF (diesel exhaust fluid, I think they used to even use pig urine for DEF at one time), it can also be good for melting ice and probably also a good anti-freeze.