THE PROBLEM
Pollution
Our society is entirely dependent on flush-toilet technology that wastes energy, water, and nutrients, and uses our natural environment as a dumping ground for our “wastes.” The result is that our rivers, streams, lakes, and estuaries are showing increasingly severe algae blooms and toxic cyanobacteria outbreaks.
On Cape Cod, MA
36 of the 40 coastal estuaries are impaired by nutrients and require nitrogen reduction. One-third of freshwater ponds on the Cape are polluted by nutrients and have ‘unacceptable’ water quality.
In the USA
More than 15,000 water bodies are impaired due to nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
Most human waste nutrients eventually end up in the ocean. Excess nutrients from agriculture and human waste have created 400 “dead zones” in the oceans.
At the same time most nutrients are being wasted, globally the supplies of synthetic fertilizers have drastically decreased and prices have increased by 400% . If wasted nutrients were recovered and recycled as fertilizer, nitrogen from urine alone could replace ¼ of global nitrogen fertilizer needs.
On a home-scale, recycled nitrogen from urine can provide a continuous supply of safe fertilizer for home gardens and local food production.
How recycling pee could help to save the world
Farmers around the world are struggling. Your pee could help
The urine revolution: how recycling pee could help to save the world
The Green Center 