While humans on one hand are competing to exploit nature to the maximum to let their selfish ends meet, scientists on the other hand, seems to be up with arms to find out alternatives to help meet man’s demands without injuring the nature.
One such gesture is manifested in an Australian researcher’s innovation with a new ‘source of phosphorus,’ which is suffering from global shortage – its ‘human urine!’
So, while urinating, you can well be assured of its no longer being considered as a waste, but a fertilizer that can help meet its increasing demands across the world – call it organic fertilizer?
So, with the world’s phosphorus deposits due to run out in about 50 years, recycling urine seems to be the new answer to the looming shortage.
Ah! A person producing 500 liters of urine each year can produce a considerable amount of the fertilizer component – phosphorus.
Associate Professor Cynthia Mitchell, of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney says,
Urine is the most concentrated source of phosphorus. At the moment, we dilute that through our sewage system and send it out to the ocean.
In the industrialized world, we must start moving to a resource-recovery approach rather than the current waste-treatment approach.
This finding calls for a ‘sanitation revolution’ which demands new technology capable of separating urine right at home while urinating, as is already being used in Sweden.
If this turns out to be successful, lack of phosphorus would be a tell-tale, hence future soil quality and production would no longer be a matter of worry.
