A new forest is being grown with fertilised nutrients recovered from urine – collected from music festival toilets in a UK first.
The woodland will feature 4,500 native British trees – grown with fertiliser made from pee from Bristol Pride, Boomtown, the London Marathon, and gigs including Massive Attack and the Sugababes.
It is being planted on the Breacon Beacons National Park as part of a Forestry Commission-backed trial.
Behind it is NPK Recovery – a Bristol-based start-up that collects thousands of litres of urine from portable toilets at festivals and events and transforms them into fertiliser.
The female-founded company has collected wee from some of the biggest events over the last few years and turned it into fertiliser used to help grow grass back on the land.
The small team now has ambitious plans to use their fertiliser to grow the forest.
Scientists within NPK Recovery extract the nitrogen and other nutrients such as phosphorous and potassium in urine to produce fertiliser on site in a natural bacteria driven process that is suitable for crops and trees to take up.
Recently the team have perfected their own mobile processing system – a unit that takes up a similar space to a small horse box; two metres wide and six metres long, which they take to events and plug into the back of festival toilets.
This means they can process the urine into fertiliser as the festival runs right there on site – easing the burden on the volume of sewage that the event produces and minimising chemical use.
The team then work with the festival and land owners to put the fertiliser to use on their land or they take it with them.
The process required to make the product also incorporates biochar – which is a sustainable material that improves soil health.
The product has already been used to grow crops such as wheat and mustard – with field trails indicating it is just as effective as synthetic and commonly used fertilisers.
Product manager Lucy Bell-Reeves said the company is determined to spark accessible conversations about sustainability.
She said: “Everybody goes to the toilet!
“It’s about understanding the power of your pee even if you’re not an environmentalist.
“Urine is a resource that we have in abundance – so it really is a win win here.
“However, for anyone asking it is not a good idea to start weeing in your garden!
“Urine has great nutrients but it also contains other components that are not safe or free from pathogens and contaminants.”
Lucy said the reason they use urine and not feces is because it is much harder to recover nutrients from mixed waste.
She said: “If you have fecal contamination, it is more likely to have pathogens that are more challenging to remove.
“So the exciting thing is that more festivals are using urine diverting toilets such as Peequals – where the urine is already separated which is great.
“It means you can recover the maximum amount of nutrients possible which is the best solution.
“When the urine is mixed in with other waste, or even shower water, it’s much harder to recover nutrients and do anything with it.”
The team hope to bridge a gap between creating sustainable and safe fertiliser that is affordable and easy to source – particularly at a time when the war in Iran has put pressure on the availability and price of imported synthetic fertiliser.
Lucy said they want to create “fertiliser security” for farmers and growers in the UK.
NPK Recovery’s plans to grow a forest are well underway – and this will be this will be the first time their fertiliser has been used on trees.
The company has partnered with Welsh charity Stump up for Trees and its tree nursery on the outskirts of Abergavenny.
Lucy said: “We wanted to explore where else our sustainable fertiliser could make an impact and the government has set high tree planting targets.
“So we can’t wait to give these trees a good fighting start and lead a UK first in using nutrients from urine to grow trees.”
Lucy added the team are interested to hear from anybody who wants to “manage a more sustainable way to recycle their waste”.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source discover.swns.com ’
