I just thought of a way to save 5 million litres of water every day in Australia!

[redwing]

As a concept, it even cracked a mention in the Washington Post

Human Urine Safe, Productive Fertilizer

Cash-strapped farmers shouldn't look far for a source of free fertilizer, according to a new study that finds human urine to be a great source of nitrogen and other minerals.

The "yuck" factor aside, scientists who used urine to help raise a bumper crop of cabbages said the practice may not be a bad idea.

"Urine is a valuable fertilizer which poor people could use to increase yields and not contaminate their environment. It is a resource, not a pollutant, if correctly managed," said Helvi Heinonen-Tanski, leader of a research group at the University of Kuopio's Department of Environmental Sciences in Finland.

Cont...

A comical post here also

Free Nitrogen! Comes with Handy Dispensor!

Watch out for the Pee Police though

Mother fined $2,500 after toddler pees in garden

 

[lizzie]

Actually - I do wonder why we pump out human sewer out to sea instead of inland ... dry it in big piles and would make a fabulous fertilizer ... we use animal waste, which is very nutrient rich, so why not human?

 

[DaveM]

I have an idea that would save 21 million litres of water every day!!!

Everyone in Australia drinks 1 litre of water less a day.

Genius!

 

[pinkboy]

I have an idea that would save 21 million litres of water every day!!!

Everyone in Australia drinks 1 litre of water less a day.

Genius!

Problem with that is probably half the polulation probably would go into negative territory re. water consumption.

Now they say we should be drinking 8-10 cups (2-2.5L) of water daily - that is outside of the umpteenth coffee/coke/Red Bull etc that the modern day person are also consuming.

We are not a healthy nation in this regard.

pinkboy

 

[BayView]

When we were having our house built last year, I was talking to the guy who did our pool about the permits to fill it and what was involved...we were going over the application to the Council at the time.

I made a comment (can't remember exactly what it was) about the volume of water used by household pools and families in general; ie; lots of it.

My pool guy waved his hand and said words to the effect that what households and pools use as a % was but a mere dot compared with what is consumed by everyone and everything including businesses and industries etc.

I have also heard that one coffee making business (Starbucks I think) leave their sink taps running constantly for some sort of health reasons; imagine that across every one of their hundreds/thousands of shops.

Makes you wonder why we little folk in our houses even bother. I guess it gives us a "feelgood" moment.

 

[kathryn d]

At the Roadhouse here, they only have dam water (which is very low atm)
I overheard a mother and teenage daughter speaking in the station ladies washroom. The mother said to the daughter she had forgotten to shut off the water tap.
Daughter replies, she always leaves it running when she pees.

 

[weg]

My pool guy waved his hand and said words to the effect that what households and pools use as a % was but a mere dot compared with what is consumed by everyone and everything including businesses and industries etc.

I once came across a list of procucts and how much water they needed to be produced, and I remember it was 11 litres of water for a bottle of wine.

I also read that the equivalent of 50% of residential water use is wasted through our pipes via leaks, and that it's more cost effective to leave the leaks rather than fix them.

I don't know how much truth there is in the latter though.

 

[kathryn d]

We went thru a sugar refinery in Queensland a few months ago.
They used and recylced everything with sugar cane.
It was quite fascinating.

 

[DEC]

It gets pretty corrosive.
Fence next to a coffee shop in Vietnam

 

[Rixter]

And what is your solution for Canberra in winter when it's too cold?

Why thats simple spides..water the indoor plants instead.

 

[Ajax]

I can picture all the urine from a hotel or better still something like Sydney football stadium at half time or Easter show flowing into a big Ajax Fertilizer Corporation tanker.

I'm going to make a killing-rivers of gold.

Really...there is no reason why waste from urinals can't be diverted for reuse as fertilizer...a bit like urine from cows at those large mechanised milking stations (am thinking rotolactor) or urine from cattle and sheep at sale yards.

It has been done before...a client of mine who used to rent out large tanks at a tank farm in Sydney had a customer who would buy a tanker load of effluent from sewerage processing plants, store it in his tanks then sell it as fertiliser. Potential health issues with viruses/bacteria when applied to soil and also the smell affecting neighbouring residential areas stopped the operation.