Peecycling: From Liquid Waste to Healthy Crops

Peecycling: From Liquid Waste to Healthy Crops

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Composting bathrooms are very uncommon within the U.S., however a quiet infrastructure crisis, and the inherent unsustainability of the standard flush toilet are good causes to think about constructing them extra usually.

Most individuals, in the event that they’ve heard of composting bathrooms in any respect, consider the massive, passive composting systems present in distant campgrounds and trailheads. Often little higher than pit bathrooms, passive composting bathrooms might be efficient, however there are far more high-tech and environment friendly approaches obtainable these days. What all these new techniques have in frequent is urine diversion, colloquially often called peecycling.

Urine Diversion

Urine diversion is hardly a high-tech idea. It’s truly a reasonably apparent strategy to composting human waste when you perceive the essential biology behind composting.

Composting is the pure decomposition of natural matter by microorganisms. These microorganisms thrive when their feedstock (the fabric being decomposed) has a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of roughly 30-to-1 and the moisture stage is between 40 % and 60 %.

Urine can intrude with composting of different natural supplies as a result of it’s a liquid with excessive nitrogen content material. Plus, the urea in urine degrades into ammonia, which kills the microbes that break down the waste. But when it’s processed individually, urine has important worth as a fertilizer.

Liquid Gold

Urine additionally doesn’t require composting to be a valuable fertilizer. It is 95 % water with the remaining 5 % comprising the excessive nitrogen content material that may overload a compost pile, in addition to phosphorus and potassium.

The nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (N-P-Ok) ratio for human urine is 10-1-4, which is way healthier for garden soil than the 10-10-10 business fertilizers bought as “balanced.”

Rich Earth

The Rich Earth Institute works to reclaim human waste as a useful resource via analysis, schooling, and regulatory advocacy. Their analysis contains research of the impacts of economic mineral fertilizer, the worth of human-derived fertilizer, strategies for enhancing urine-derived fertilizer, and social analysis to know the obstacles to reuse of human waste. They additionally supply excursions, workshops, and conferences for farmers, engineers, and others involved in peecycling.

But maybe their most essential work is advocating for a regulatory framework to permit widespread recycling of urine. The World Health Organization has recognized that urine is a protected and helpful fertilizer that requires little or no processing. However, most U.S. jurisdictions don’t acknowledge source-separated urine as a definite materials from wastewater or sewage.

Rich Earth Institute, along with Recode, is working to update the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC) and different coverage and regulatory paperwork to incorporate finest practices for urine recycling.

What You Can Do

If you propose to build a composting toilet, select a urine-diverting design. But if a composting bathroom is just not in your future and also you wish to pee within the backyard, we gained’t decide you.

For extra privateness, many people within the homesteading tradition hold supplementary bucket bathrooms or moveable urinals of their loos. They dilute the collected urine to be used as a liquid fertilizer within the backyard. Folks with common plumbing and no room for an additional bathroom should purchase urine-diverting flush bathrooms. But when you reside within the space of Brattleboro, Vermont, contemplate donating your urine for recycling.

Editor’s Note: This article was initially printed on January 29, 2020, and was up to date throughout January 2025.