Peecycling: could donating your urine to farmers help feed the world?
Name: Peecycling.
Age: As a term, dates to about 2006; as a practice, centuries old.
Appearance: All yellow.
If this is about peeing while riding a bicycle, I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. This is about saving and storing your urine.
Why would I want to do that? So the CIA can’t get it? So that it can be recycled.
Recycled as what? Fertiliser. Human urine is a rich source of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. According to the Rich Earth Institute of Vermont, the urine one adult produces in a year – 125 US gallons (473 litres) – is sufficient to grow 320lbs (145kg) of wheat.
That’s a lot of wheat. And pee. Making it an especially welcome idea at a time when industrially produced fertiliser is expensive and in short supply, thanks to sanctions against Russia, where a lot of it comes from.
If I can use my pee to humiliate Putin, then that weird dream I had last week will sort of come true. What’s more, those same nutrients, when flushed into wastewater systems, become contaminants responsible for creating environmentally damaging algal blooms.
So by saving my pee I could help the environment, thwart Russian aggression and produce urine-rich bread? You’d also save about 4,000 US gallons (15,000 litres) of potable water annually, according to the Rich Earth Institute.
Let’s say I wanted to give my urine to a farmer. How would I go about that? If you live in Vermont, you can donate it by the jug. The foundation supplies free funnels and has a collection depot in Brattleboro. It can be “a little sloshy” at first, peecycler Kate Lucy told the New York Times, but you get used to it.
And if I’m outside the Brattleboro area? It’s largely an idea in search of the necessary infrastructural adjustments. But there are some initiatives in place: Paris plans to install urine-diverting toilets in 600 new apartments, using the collected pee to fertilise the city’s green spaces.
If fertiliser is so expensive, why I can’t I sell my pee for profit? The price of urine has risen recently – from $1 for 25 litres to about $6, but you’d be hardpressed to make a living as a sole provider.
In that case, I’ll just go in my own garden. Maybe not your front garden.
Do say: “If ever oh ever a wiz there was, this whizz of ours is one because, because, because, because, because, because of the wonderful things it does.”
Don’t say: “I’ve seen them manage it in the Tour de France – how hard can it be?”