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Pee-cycling: Turning human urine into fertilizer
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- Опубліковано 18 сер 2024
- Researchers around the world are studying the use of recycled human urine as agricultural fertilizer, to return precious nutrients and minerals to the soil. Correspondent Faith Salie talks with representatives of the Rich Earth Institute about the process of collecting, pasteurizing and distributing massive quantities of pee, and with farmers and gardeners in Vermont who are using urine on their land.
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What about the medications that are eliminated in our urine? I'm not against pee as fertilizer. But I do have questions.
Medications are a concern but generally as long as you're not taking chemo-therapy meds it's fine. Your body breaks down most of the drug and whatever metabolites remain continue breaking down in the soil by bacteria, sun, and oxygen.
Not a serious concern for how dilute the amounts are we're talking here, especially as it's mixed with other people's waste. Only homeopaths should be worried. Not because there's any risk of harm to public health though.
Medications disease and illegal drugs too
The meds end up in our water ways anyway. At least there’s natural plant fertilizer and hopefully less dead zones in the ocean.
Currently our waste water treatment systems aren’t able to able to remove medical metabolites even now. Ecologically we are losing species of fish and amphibians due to the rising levels of unmetabolized birth control in the water of metropolitan areas. There is currently debate over the decreasing age of girls’ first menstrual cycles as well, this has been a trend for nearly three decades now and it is likely to have multiple causes.
Sorry for the lengthy answer; I am a science educator and my research is in the area of amphibian extinctions and their ecological impact.
Love this story, and good for Sunday Morning to explore the new frontiers in expanding how we can renew, reuse, regenerate. A lot to learn from watching this episode, thanks for covering!
Bet you love golden showers
This is the most Vermont thing ever
Hormones and pharmaceuticals leftovers need to be addressed especially for direct consumption as drinking water.
@@nonya.bizness agreed
You are right. Urine recycling will be viewed in the future as as a danger pushed by misguided people. Trace pharmaceuticals and concentration of bodies toxic wastes.
The large majority of those things get oxidized and broken down in the soil by bacteria (and that's after your body already broke down most of them)
@@alexrogers777 BS
I doubt you are qualified to speak on the subject.@@silentmajority8365
I love this story, but I wish it had also covered the historical context which would show that as recently as the Victorian era this recycling of human waste was standard practice. Night Soil men would scour the streets for dog “muck” and pay a few pennies for the contents of chamber pots which they could sell for fertilizers and to leather tanners.
That's right - everything was used back then. They didn't understand the science behind why urine is good (the nitrogen and potassium feeds plants), but they did know it made the tomato plants grow better. Many developing countries use human waste as fertilisers.
Rather than dog muck think horses - 1 to 2 million kilos of horse poo per day (plus 150,000 litres of horse wee) in the 1890's in New York. You can imagine the difficulty of trying to cross the street without stepping in something (or stopping the hem of your long dress from getting "mucky"). You can imagine how many cartloads per day were required to take it out of the city to surrounding farms, or be deposited on barges for shipment to Barren Island in Jamaica Bay. As you say, the multiple uses to which wee could be put made the Petermen a valuable link in many production chains - as well as leather tanning it was used in dying cloth, and producing saltpetre for gunpowder. I was tickled when I read that because the English drank beer, which produces a higher urea content than wee produced from wine drinkers which was what mainland Europeans tended to drink, English saltpetre, and by extension English gunpowder attracted a premium price in the European market in the 15th and 16th century.
@@user-fm6ns5nb4j I love that you know the history! ❤️
Have you tried talking to some of the local bars I'm sure they can help😂
Cool. I have been using my urine in my garden for about a year. It is amazing. I pour directly on the soil around plants watered down, and also compost with sawdust and azomite and oyster shell lime and other dolomitic lime. It doesn't smell when it is fresh and it doesn't smell when it composts which takes 24 hours or less once you've got a good composting culture started. It does stink pretty bad if you leave it in a bottle.
My dad used to urinate directly in his garden. :-)
This can't be any worse than manure that is spread here on Wisconsin fields! We always know when the farmers are spreading it because it takes over the fresh air, lol!
It’s odd that it’s taken this long to figure out.
Oh, I thought that was just how Wisconsinites smelled!
I live in ohio, love that smell. Cuz our sweet corn is sure to follow. I consider it a strong notification of good eatin soon to come ha ha
Do cows take Fent? or have aids?
Smells, like money.
I have been using urine as just one of the nutrient sources in my organic garden for almost 40 yrs.. I don't use any pharmaceuticals, and eat a well balanced diet. My other nutrient sources are compost (made myself) and chicken manure/pine shaving litter.
What they didn't say ( and I know because Kim Nace is my cousin) is that you dilute the urine and let it sit for a month, I think, before using it on your garden.
@@emmymcgowan1781good point to know, thanks!
@@emmymcgowan1781I dilute mine and use it immediately. In the winter I use it full strength.
What can you tell me about using urine for your composting? I do composting too.
@@someguy2135 The best compost is made when temperature and moisture in your compost pile are at optimum levels. When my compost pile needs moisture I use urine, full strength, sprinkled on top of the pile, then mixed in. The urine enhances the microbial activity within the pile, while adding trace minerals to the compost.
We used pee for our garden when I was kid 70 years ago in Taiwan. Most farmer in Taiwan my grandmother’s time they use P for vegetable gardens.
Been doing this for years. I use wood ash not to much mixed in before planting. Everyone loves my tomatoes.
I’ve also used it to grow grass in bare spots. 10-20% urine to 80-90% water.
Of course I never pour this on the plants only the soil. Myself I will not put this around lettuce. Oh I fertilize my Apple trees with urine also.
So the tomatoes are on Prozac?
In the Philippines,We had been using urine to fertilize flowering plants
Someone needs to get with truck drivers. They might not leave there pee bottles all over the place, making others pick up after them.
I’ve been trucking for over 25 years, and the one thing I hate is the smell of urine soaked pavement at truck stops.
This is fantastic. What's the next step? Can we get them to partner with Kohler, American Standard, Moen to make these toilets and collection systems commonplace?
@@nonya.biznessand yet it is totally fine to have a septic system which leaches effluent into the ground. I also read that they take the sludge part to the waste management facility for treatment. I hope someone is getting the nutrients out of it.
I’d love to have my husband water my compost pile but we live in town and I’m sure my neighbors would not appreciate looking out the window and seeing that. 😂 Someday when we live in the country…..
You could always have him urinate into an empty juice bottle. If you're worried about neighbors seeing the color of the liquid, spray paint the outside of the bottle. Or you can pour the liquid from the bottle into a watering can. Then the neighbors can't see what's inside, and you can more evenly distribute the urine into your compost. As an added benefit of the watering can, you can add water to distribute the urine even more evenly and hydrate your compost when it's getting dry.
My father used his own urine in his garden when I was little (1971). He died, or he would still be using it. If I'd remembered this when I was still able to garden, I'd have probably done it too, back when I didn't use any medications.
Brawndo has what plants crave.
What about all the pharmaceuticals that humans take
Maybe the pasteurization breaks some of it down? Good question
- this is exactly what I was wondering
About 1% of muncipal urine is pharmaceuticals and their metabolites. These also land up in drinking water: "Samples from 1091 sites in Principal Aquifers representing 60% of the volume pumped for drinking-water supply had final data for 21 hormones and 103 pharmaceuticals." cite: DOI: 10.1021/acs. est. 8b05592
It's not "public urination"... it's fertilizing... at least that's what I'm tellin' the cop next pub crawl... ;-P
I've been saving my #1 and using it for feeding my landscaping plants...
Adding urine to a compost pile is a known way to kick start a compost pile. My most serious concern would be the sodium in urine. If the soil doesn't leach salt adequately it could be possible to seriously stunt plant growth. Aside from that, great idea.
Fertilizer producers will make all kinds of campaign to discredit these innovative and thoughtful people. Natural will always be better than lab-made
As a man I have been fertilizing many trees over the years! Until my neighbors called the cops on me!
RUB LARD ON "IT"- NO! CRISCO IS SHORTING! , SO THE NEIGHBORS AREN'T ENVIOUS! OUT OF SIGHT! OUT OF MIND. NO DANCING WHILST.....
I've previously used my own urine on my own garden. It works wonderfully.
It works ?
To do what ?
Moisturize ? LOL 😂
@@AmericanTeacher-USA I suggest watching the video again. Perhaps you'll get a better understanding of the concept.
Minerals come out of soil, go into plant, you eat plant, you urinate minerals back out makes sense to put them back in the soil to restart the cycle
I’m sorry!! But I live in Orlando Florida! Seriously! Think about the amount of pee ALL the theme parks generate!! Let’s CASH! That COW in!!!
Why not? Human solid and liquid waste actually does have use in nature. Pillbugs and the like actually will break both down and use them as food and their waste goes back directly into the soil that can benefit plants. Plus, close to a hundred and ten years ago, we used to all have outhouses. Basically a little building with a bench that had a hole in it that you went in, sat down, did your business, and both the liquid and solid waste portions fell into a pit dug underneath the bench. Once the pit was full, it would be backfilled and the outhouse would be moved to the next pit site on the property.
Is the urine safe if people are on drugs, prescription or not? How about when people eat the wrong food? Is it always safe? Anybody’s urine?
it's better than the synthetic fertilizer that would be used otherwise
Been using it on grass for years. Works a treat and gives excellent growth.
Grass is great !!
Food is forbidden !
....at least, for me !
My abuela would use urine she saved from overnight chamber pots and mix with hose water to water her roses in pots in our backyard fence. The mid 70s. She was born in 1894 in Los Mochis Mx. Those roses lasted until maybe the mid 90s we sold our childhood home after mom passed in 2015.
South Park got it right once again.
My grass dies where the dog pees. Is it just too concentrated to help plants then hurt them?
Yes. Urine should be diluted with eight to ten parts water due to acidity.
This is some Gross but interesting stuff...There's so much that the FDA doesn't regulate ..including if the tomatoes I'm eating are cage-grown or urine-free...
A family of four can fertilize a garden for a year known fact. One part urine to 10 parts water.
This should be done at the municipal level.
Pee on courthouses?
I solute to these people, they are doing a very important job helping the future of our earth. China had been doing this for thousands of years , I still remember when I was small every morning the collectors coming to every house to collect the human waste and sold them to farmers so farmers can use them in their farm field . China only stopped using this practice very lately past decades, due to the availability of chemical fertilizer.
One gallon mixed into 8 gallons for a total of 9 gallons to spray.
Wow, so now a quiet day on the farm can smell like a bus station!!!
Check out Milorginate out of Milwaukee... treated sewage sludge into fertilizer since 1926.
there's too many PFAS in milorganite
This is why you need to wash your lettuce three times. 😐
There’s also lots of pharmaceuticals!
The methods of dealing with human waste in developed nations is as idiotic as it is wasteful. Instead of using potable water to flush our "business" into a vast, complex and expensive sewage treatment system, we could divert water from non-sanitary sources (sinks, showers, washing machines) for use in toilet flushing and irrigation.
Traditional toilets could be replaced with urine-separating toilets. The collected waste (both liquid and solid) is then used as fertilizer.
As shown in this piece, liquid waste can be applied ground applied. In fact, human urine is so rich with vital nutrients that it may even have to be diluted so as to avoid burning the roots of certain plants.
Beyond this, human feces can be composted then used as fertilizer in as little as 120 days when lime is added, or from 6 months to 2 years when lime isn't added. Note that this is when used for vegetable fertilization. Humanure can be used as fertilizer for plants such as fruit trees in even less time.
Using potable water for toilet flushing and irrigation is wasteful, and the cost and sizeable carbon footprint of synthetic fertilizers can be largely avoided when substituted with humanure.
Lastly, the day is coming when the effluent of municipal wastewater treatment facilities will be returned to the drinking water supply, rather than be released to watersheds.
It works great until a prion disease like chronic wasting disease or mad cow disease pops up in humans.
...uhh... I grew up raising animals. I have friends who have worked in meat packing plants. If you eat chicken, beef or pork you have been eating legally allowed fecal matter. Google it if you are in doubt. At least this is more carefully checked.
No explanation about why it is being done? What advantages does it have?
returning nutrients to the ground, nitrogen, etc. they talked about it in the video
@@coreysuffield Thanks, but I meant the advantages over other methods of fertilization in terms of climate impact, yield of plants, etc.
If we have reached this point. Human Population has reached too high. Balance must be restored. With a planet full of water, there is no freaking reason why anyone should be using urine to water greens. Absolutely insane.
They're using it to fertilize.
I totally agree with this statement. And I'm surprised that so many people are agreeable with peeing on food. Glad I saw this video though...I will never eat anything from someone's garden again. 🤢🤮🥴
I'd love to see urine depots and Community Libraries throughout the country.
I live well off the road and have been applying urine directly to the lawn for years.
I pee in my garden all the time, I just don’t feel like running back to the house.
In the USA we usually just make beer out of it
Leave it to Merica to do the right thing after exhausting all other options. Yet still mess it up with pasteurization. What a waste of energy
People have been doing this for some time now. It works! My greens love it! I also use my urine to protect my plants from the deer and in my compost pile.
Ironically it was the advent of chemical fertilizers in the “Green revolution” which had us forget this simple and straight forward solution which we used for thousands of years. The good news is, the hardest problems have already been solved, the bad news is we forgot the solutions and need to be retaught how brilliant these approaches were all along.
This has been a staple, go-to move in the so-called developing world (particularly most of Asia) for millennia. Other than not removing suspended solids and bacteria as well as other organisms from the urine (and a very big part of the reason most municipalities do not actively pursue this) and apart from the fact that more often than not, your food will smell and taste like urine (a problem that occurs with the application of too much liquid gold and the direct consumption of crops grown with it), it is not a particularly bad move from an environmental/resources standpoint. Just understand that you will not replace all chemical fertilizers with this (you will not even make a dent in it via replacement/substitution).
To cut down on the urinary smell (and the piece is lying here: depending on what the person donating the urine eats, urine will have different smells), simply grow an intermediary crop (ideally on fallow land), harvest it, and apply it as fertilizer for the crop of interest, or simply use it to grow feed for animals.
In sum, this is not a new idea; it's just "newly discovered", again, by Westerners. This is an old idea that cycles in and out of fashion in the developed world every twenty years or so, along the re-use of night soil (AKA- poop or treated sewage).
And it always falls short.
long overdue
If the urine isn’t full of pharmaceuticals it’s a great idea! I’ve used my urine as a deer repellent with much success.
Pharmaceuticals are a concern but generally as long as you're not taking chemo-therapy meds it's fine. Your body breaks down most of the drug and whatever metabolites remain continue breaking down in the soil by bacteria, sun, and oxygen.
@@alexrogers777 there’s Prozac in our fish, so idk. My concern is municipalities once again offering human waste as fertilizer. I’m 100% opposed to that. It’s easy to imagine people are responsible about what they put down the toilet, I guarantee they are not! No worries,they say they test for 11 chemicals! Oh boy!
Qhy not? We will have to learn how to recycle when we begin space colonization in earnest.
So only we can boiling the urine and use it ? I try with out bacteria come and eat the plant..
I never heard of using “recycled” pee but people always said that pee was good for the land and even human fezes
Fertilizer is pee ,…so why aren’t we pee ing on our 🌹 and vegetables 🥕!! . Imagine every morning driving by your neighbor watching him l fertilizer his garden!! ,…the Swiss Chard’s looking 👀 a bit ,..wilted ,..go pee on it!! LOL!
@@nonya.bizness so ! That’s why they are called Pees ? Sugar Pee ,…pee pods !?! So ,..Pee green soup is a thing??
I love how the example for France was just a guy peeing in an outdoor toilet in the middle of the street.. Talk about the epitome of privacy!
This is a great story. I recently performed in a play where a character shared that he used human urine to grow beautiful orchids in Hawaii.
Ok golden showers 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Has any research been done as to what hormones (birth control etc.) and medications are passed through the body and what all is left in the urine that we are putting on the plants we eat and what effects they have on the food we eat? Just a thought. P. S. - Get that journalist some makeup and better lighting or something, I was kind of scared when I first saw her.
What you use for "natural gas"?
Your breath. 💨
Sounds like a great idea ...
If you haven’t watched the ending, you’re in for a surprise.
If you pee on it ,….”it” will grow !
If Trump can do it on the Constitution, why not farmers on their crops?
Provide 1 example. Ill wait.
I wonder how long this “good idea” becomes mandatory?
Are the midications taken by people are not past on to the earth and plants.
What is a manure pile ? People used to sell their pee to the tanner . I’ve been using pee fertilizer for years . Hope I run into some drug effects from the city sewerage compost . Do people know nothing ?
I love ❤when my puppy does the pee pee dance!
4:55 guy in the lab coat is hot hot hot! 🫡🚒
*_WOAH!_* Simmer down.
That’s his girlfriend!
We should pee on the Moon!! 🌙
When I was in Vietnam (circa 1979), the elementary school in my town would collect urine from the class, dilute it, then water their class veggie garden. Either it was school policy or Ms Pham just needed to fulfill a sick fetish and should be kept far away from children. I'm now a 52 year old Californian and my bladder and the makers of Bud Light provide urea directly to my plants the old fashion way, and undiluted. I've found certain species tolerate the salts better--potted Asian pears are highly sensitive. Kumquats do best, but non my established potted citrus (I have over 20) get salt burn unless I overdo it. Veggies tend to do well. Potted fig trees also do well (I have over 40). My very young citrus also burn easily (duh). Either way, practice common sense--never just go full bore on one plant, but spread the love each time to different pots and avoid full strength urine on your plants when they're dry or heat stressed (I badly burned my Satsuma Mandarin this way). Hope this helps those hoping to get started.
Nitrogen.
😂❤ this takes me back to 9 grade chemistry when I was talking with my teacher about how they made gunpowder back in the day😂 don't try it at home you will get swatted
These minerals from human waste should be recovered at all sewage treatment plants.
It definitely smells.
No, this is different than when you wake up in your own pee, which I’m sure you’ve done countless times.
@@lewstone5430 you're projecting.
The most useful thing I did today was create fertilizer
Pee jokes are constant 😂😂
The science is right, and on a personal level it works. But the PR hit for any type of farmer is just too high. You tell your customers you use human urine, and you are done. It is also an insignificant amount of nitrogen on the grand scheme of things.. I'm all for upcycling, but when you have special trucks and your are pasteurizing (heating for long amounts of time) urine only to end up with what amounts to .5-0-0 fertilizer. I mean think about the absurdity of telling their farmer they have to pay for the pasteurization process to get a .5-0-0 fertilizer that needs to be collected with special trucks. And they don't even mention pharmaceuticals in the urine.
I'm surprised by the number of Americans who haven't heard of this. I was taught as a child about the nitrogen and potassium in urine and how plants love it diluted with water. Europe has many separation toilet models available to collect urine. Western governments struggle to process all the human waste in our sewer systems, and yet that waste is a wonderful free source of fertiliser.
"Don't pay the dunnyman"(infamous parody folksong).....
More enterprising folk might try electrolysis on urine but shockingly folk often think they are taking the p.😺
Pee cycling. Sounds like something I could get behind.
Pharmaceutical recycling, you get to eat and drink your neighbors drugs
Ewwwwwwwwwwww.
It does have an odor....If It doesn't How can there be any nutrients.... LOL 😆😊
It's got what plants crave.
There's too many pharmaceutical drugs that can't be filtered out.
So Waterworld guy was right!
Pee jokes are streamlined
lol, this is one of the reasons why some countries had open defecation, that was meant for the soil because toilets were either expensive or inaccessible.
5 gallons a month. Lol
I fill a 5 gallon every 2 days
The Chelsea gardens has bales of straw for men to pee on.
So the defense is, "we always have done it this way!" Doesn't mean it isn't wrong! It's a 2 tier justice system, 1 for the 1% & 1 for the rest of us.
We call it "doing a Munro" after Bert Munro (the film "The World's Fastest Indian" was based on his life). He peed on the lemon tree every morning. Ditto. For a while.
But I wouldn't do it on leafy veg.
See a tree 🌳 pee a tree 🚿 😂
Next is poopcycling
Human waste is different than cow patties, you can't compost them the same. Dangerous is the difference actually.
Milorganite is a fertilizer product from human solod waste. Been around for decades.
Milorganite is a fertilizer product from human solod waste. Been around for decades.
Milorganite is a fertilizer product from human solid waste. It's been around for decades.
Milorganite is a fertilizer product from human solid waste. It's been around for decades.
Brawndo...it's what plants crave