I’m acquainted with a home that had 4 rooms and a path…
but I didn’t know back then that I could piss on my tomatoes and the vines turn green and grow faster!
(I also learned at an early age not to aim at the electric fence!)
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Yeah, those faults cause them problems OK, especially the San Andreas …
;-)M
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The thing is that all the rain falls in a few months when they get rain and in the Santa Monica mountains they average something like 21 inches in that time, but on a season they get more like 50 to compensate those years they only get single digits all bets are off. Every place I ever lived in CA depended on a septic tank and when it floods many fail. Topanga beach had a lagoon that could be quite dangerous in terms of bacterial contamination but after big floods even the ocean can be contaminated by overflow.
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Here is a study from the University of Michigan https://mbgna.umich.edu/intern-post-a-golden-opportunity-using-human-urine-as-plant-fertilizer/
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Intern Post: A Golden Opportunity – Using Human Urine as Plant Fertilizer
Aug 9, 2019
By Harrison Suchyta
The Nature Academy is focused on training a new generation of environmental leaders in sustainability, conservation, and ecological restoration. As part of the Nature Academy program, each intern writes a blog post and develops a project. The project provides an opportunity to take on responsibility in an area of interest, contribute to the goals of their team, and develop a skill or area of knowledge that can be added to the intern’s portfolio. The post may reflect the project or be a nature-related topic of personal interest to the intern.
Usually the things that go down the toilet are gone forever. Toilet paper? That goldfish you had in middle school? All lost to a sewer system you will most likely never see. If these other more tangible things are gone then it would make sense that urine, something toilets were built to collect, would be gone forever too. Yet my research challenges that notion and seeks to introduce urine to ecological systems through use as a fertilizer.
Using urine as a fertilizer may seem far-fetched, but the elements found in urine—nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus—match those found in fertilizer, and are required by plants. My work this summer has been split between Dr. Nancy Love’s environmental biotechnology lab for the College of Environmental Engineering and as a summer intern at Matthaei-Nichols.
In the lab I learned several things: what kinds of problems fertilizer and wastewater facilities pose, how urine-derived fertilizers solve environmental issues by preventing certain elements from reaching those facilities, how urine-derived fertilizer is developed, and possible applications for it in the future. I also learned about how fertilizers are used, what types of fertilizers exist and what opportunities exist for urine-derived fertilizers from my work in the botanical gardens.
Curves showing potential phosphorus decline (left) and the growing number of coastal dead zones around the world.
Fertilizer made from urine aims to solve problems with eutrophication, which is nutrient build-up in bodies of water. This build-up cultivates bacterial growth, which draws oxygen out of the water. Most wastewater facilities in coastal cities treat water for both nitrogen and phosphorus. But inland cities, especially those on the Mississippi River, only treat for phosphorus, leading to dead zones in places like the Gulf of Mexico since the excess nutrients travel down the river and culminate in the gulf. Nitrogen and phosphorus are also two of the most energy intensive elements to treat, and by removing them from wastewater plants the energy consumption would drastically decrease.
The extensive use of fertilizer also suggests that phosphorus is abundant. But research in phosphorus mining suggests that supplies will be gone or in strategically difficult-to-access places within the next one hundred years. The limited availability of phosphorus makes collecting urine, an entirely renewable source of the element, much more appealing.
Aside from preventing phosphorus overproduction, urine-derived fertilizer also limits energy consumption in wastewater facilities. The toilets that collect the urine are waterless urinals completely detached from sewage systems. This reduces water consumption and prevents urine from reaching wastewater facilities. One of these toilets is currently in use at the GG Brown building at the University of Michigan. Only a urinal is in use right now because of the difficulty of separating solid and liquid wastes for our current research purposes.
Urine-derived fertilizer is developed in a number of ways, but the lab I’m working with only focuses on freeze-thaw and struvite methods. Before any of these methods can be applied, the urine is heat pasteurized to get rid of any bacteria. The freeze-thaw method works by freezing a large volume of urine. Nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus’s properties as salts prevent them from freezing, allowing concentrated elements to leak out and leave behind low-nutrient water. If ratios of the elements need to be adjusted, extra nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus can be pulled from a volume of urine by applying a potassium chloride powder to the urine. The potassium bonds with the nitrogen and phosphorus, creating a powdery substance (struvite) with all three elements.
A waterless urinal in the University of Michigan GG Brown Building.
Urine undergoing the freeze-thaw method. The darker vials are the more concentrated products of the method while the lighter ones are low-nutrient water.
The next step of this project is to apply it to some of the beds in the Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden in summer 2020 and compare it to growth in other peony beds. Getting the word out about this project will help raise public awareness of urine-derived fertilizers and educate people on how they’re made and why they are environmentally friendly. By creating this exposure, we hope to get more people to feel comfortable with urine-derived fertilizers and bring an end to the idea that waste is gone forever once it goes down the drain.
Harrison Suchyta, from Royal Oak, Mich., enters his third year at the University of Michigan this fall studying environmental engineering. In his free time he plays guitar, plans volunteering events for his professional fraternity Alpha Chi Sigma, and is a board member for Chi Epsilon, an honors environmental engineering organization. Harrison hopes to continue doing research after undergrad.
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There are multiple urine usage posts I’m assuming due to the price of fertilizer. Anyone here using urine? - #185 by clarkinks
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north korea has it even worse, yikes!
North Korea Asks Citizens Use Poop for Manure Amid Shortages: Report (businessinsider.com)
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Oil Floats on water .
This thread is catchy and i wondered how people are doing with this? My septic has functioned great for 20+ years. Life is pretty good here
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Urine is an asset or a liability, depending on where it goes…
Here in vegas, water is recycled from what goes down shower/kitchen drains. If there’s a way of diverting urine to gardens/parks/farms, not only will there be less processing needed for the drain-water being recycled, but also less expense in fertilizing costs
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I didn’t notice anyone mentioning the combination of urine with wood ashes. Somewhere I read that this was good for fertilizing the garden; so, I’ve tried it, off and on, for several years. It seems to work well enough if not too much is applied; you have to be careful around young transplants. I use it mainly on garlic and members of the cabbage family.
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When storing urine, especially over winter, it seems wood ashes mixed in can stabilize the N in urine so it doesn’t volatize and go back to our atmosphere. As far as mixing them as a fertilizer, if you do this blindly and you might run into problems. Wood ashes are extremely alkaline so bring up the pH of the soil and both wood ashes and urine have a lot of potassium and together are capable of throwing off the nutritional balance of your soil.
If you keep tabs on your soil’s pH you probably won’t see symptoms from excess K, at least it has never been a problem with me, except perhaps in causing corking in apples. For some varieties, even annual mulching with wood chips may contribute to corking and rots, but I can only speak from flimsy anecdote on this. If I was truly scientific I would take the time to do leaf analysis with problem trees.
I use diluted urine in my vegetable garden ESPECIALLY for young starts. That is when I need plants to grow fastest and compost and urine are all I use as fertilizer for vegetables once I take plants out of my greenhouse.
Mostly I get results that impress even accomplished gardeners and keep me in vegetables all year. I store my urine in winter and use it to stimulate growth in fruit trees I need bigger, but not on established trees much, certainly not apples.
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Last winter I bought a couple bags of natural hardwood charcoal and crushed it into large buckets in my shed and peed in them every day for a few months to concentrate the N in the charcoal. Then I spread it to my plants and I guess we will see how that helps long term but I also apply it directly and haven’t ever burned anything. However I just pee on things that can handle it, citrus, dragonfruit, bananas, papaya and stone fruit. Seems to work well for me
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still hope that someday when i meet my mortal fate, i wish city ordinance would let my family throw my remains into the compost pit(a relatively deep one of course) with nothing more than my birthday suit. Partly joking but partly serious.
cremation doesn’t just pollute the air, but will leach into it practically all of the nitrogen i greedily accumulated, so would be good i give it all back with minimal losses.
ashes to ashes, dust to dust, so the book says 
While dressing me in a tuxedo and in a casket unnecessarily adds to the nonbiodegradable synthetic waste that we humans have scattered all over land and seas and piling up
also costs close to nothing other than a little elbow grease compared to conventional ways
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Funny you say that, it’s actually an option here in Seattle, though for reasons you mention you’re not allowed to do it in a home compost pile, but there are a couple different funeral homes here that specialize in it, like this one:
Unfortunately, that means it’s not so cheap as throwing someone in the back yard compost, but maybe that’s for the best.
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up to about 70 yrs ago collecting wood ash and urine and then putting out in the fields in the fall was a common practice. they would also mix it in with dry manure. the manure would absorb it and then it was put in manure spreaders to be dispersed.
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i guess the hippie vibe is very much alive in WA 
hopefully they reduce the price as it is a bit prohibitive and somewhat counter-intuitive
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The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins is a good read.
Paul? the rose breeder wrote about his experiment of using human manure in his large rose forcing greenhouses near Philadelphia in the 1800’s. He saw no reason not to use it after a trial of several years.
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I don’t know if there are cheap ways to transport bodies, but in certain states this is legal at specific sites. You can even allow coyotes and vultures to eat your remains. Personally I’d rather feed an apple or pear tree on vigorous roots. If anyone chooses to piss on my grave, they are welcome to do it.
Human superstitions are interesting, but I wouldn’t want to believe that I sustain consciousness after being buried in a box!
My best friend was buried wrapped in burlap in the woods in some natural cemetery in VA. It was all his mom could afford, but he would have been fine with it.
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totally agree!
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I told a good friend I wanted to be ground up for Pate cat food for the local animal shelter, she freaked out! 
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