Scientists are urging people to recycle their urine back into the vegetable garden, saying it can be a useful resource for putting food on the table.
Farmers spend $128,000 a year on synthetic fertilizers to grow their crops, but urine could offer a cost-effective alternative because it contains nitrogen and phosphorus essential for maintaining and promoting crop growth.
Cow manure is currently used to help grow crops, but scientists have argued that urine is not that different and could offer an eco-friendly alternative to flushing it down the toilet.
Nitrogen in urine pollutes the ocean by causing excessive algae growth, which smothers corals and poisons marine life – and scientists have shared a mixture to use the urine in your garden.
Adults shed an average of 132 gallons of urine each year, which could be converted into an odorless, cost-effective fertilizer for crops.
Farmers currently use synthetic fertilizers (pictured) which can cost around $128,000 per year.
The average person throws away about 132 gallons of urine each year, which could be converted into 13 pounds of fertilizer.
“Our urine is worth its weight in gold,” researcher Divina Gracia P. Rodriguez told ScienceNorway.
“Think of all the fertilizers we are currently lacking,” she continued. “It’s high time we start collecting and using our own waste.”
Researchers are developing toilets that can separate urine from remaining water and have already started testing them in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.
Once separated, the urine can be dried and made into odorless, inexpensive pellets that can be spread on farmland to fertilize crops.
Although the concept may not seem appealing to most, Anne Spurkland, a professor and medical researcher at the University of Oslo, told ScienceNorway that it is “completely safe.”
Spurkland said there is a way to do this method at home by mixing one part urine with nine parts water and spraying the liquid on vegetables with a narrow-nosed watering can.
“Soil bacteria convert nitrogen into new building blocks that plants use,” Spurkland said.
While the idea may seem far-fetched, researchers at the University of Michigan confirmed in a 2020 study that urine fertilizers can be used without fear that they will spread antibiotic-resistant infections.
Scientists were concerned that people supplying urine to farmers could suffer urinary tract infections (UTIs) that could contain DNA from the bacteria.
The study found that if urine is not freshly dispensed and is aged in an incubator for 10 hours, there is a 99 percent drop in antibiotic-resistant genes.
“Humans have been collecting urine and using it as fertilizer for a long, long time, but in the West it really stopped with the invention of the sewage system,” Dr Krista Wigginton, co -author of the study.
“We’re just now trying to figure out, with this infrastructure system that we have, how can we pull back and think differently about what’s going into that sewer system and capture some of these valuable products before they’re mixed and diluted with everything else?’
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