You know, just like it’s 1099
Meet the Peecyclers. Their Idea to Help Farmers Is No. 1.
When Kate Lucy saw a poster in town inviting people to learn about something known as peecycling, she was mystified.
“Why would someone pee in a jug and save it?” she wondered. “It sounds like such a wacky idea.”
She had to work the evening of the information session, so she sent her husband, Jon Sellers, to assuage her curiosity. He came home with a jug and funnel.
Human urine, Sellers learned that night seven years ago, is full of the same nutrients that plants need to flourish. It has a lot more, in fact, than Number Two, with almost none of the pathogens. Farmers typically apply those nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — to crops in the form of chemical fertilizers. But that comes with a high environmental cost from fossil fuels and mining.
The local nonprofit group that ran the session, the Rich Earth Institute, was working on a more sustainable approach: Plants feed us; we feed them.
This is in the straight news section of the NY Times, believe it or not (I’m using the Yahoo News version to avoid the paywall)
Efforts like these are increasingly urgent, experts say. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has worsened a worldwide fertilizer shortage that is driving farmers to desperation and threatening food supplies. Scientists also warn that feeding a growing global population in a world of climate change will only become more difficult.
Now, more than 1,000 gallons of donated urine later, Lucy and her husband are part of a global movement that seeks to address a slew of challenges — including food security, water scarcity and inadequate sanitation — by not wasting our waste.
At first, collecting their urine in a jug was “a little sloshy,” Lucy said. But she was a nurse and he was a preschool teacher; pee did not scare them. They went from dropping off a couple of containers every week or so at an organizer’s home to installing large tanks at their own house that get professionally pumped out.
Now Lucy feels a pang of regret when she uses a regular toilet.
Not all that strange. Urine has had many uses throughout human history.
At some point it was used as a mouthwash.
It was collected up until the advent of smokeless gunpowder(circa 1900) to make black powder.
I think it may have been used in the tanning (leather) industry as well.
Romans used it to clean togas. If you dehydrate your prisoners, you can get concentrated ammonia.
Shit would work better than urine. Koreans collected and used night soil until and maybe after the Korean War. American soldiers always knew when they had arrived at Korea due to the smell.
Well, in a country with few indoor toilets, might as well take your dump out in the fields where it would be useful!
Well I think this is a swell Idea. That way Democrats can start taxing PISS too! We already know they want to tax cow and pig farts. Why not piss?