Sunday, August 10, 2014

Using pee an "au natural" again toxic chemical fertilizer.

Should We Return The Nutrients In Our Pee Back To The Farm?

 http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/07/31/336564120/should-we-return-the-nutrients-in-our-pee-back-to-the-farm 

Let me guess how you feel about your urine: Get that smelly stuff away from me as fast as possible?
A small group of environmentalists in Vermont isn't as squeamish. Instead of flushing their pee down the drain, they're collecting it with special toilets that separate No. 1 and No. 2.
Then they're pooling the urine of the 170 volunteers in the pilot project (a quart or so, per person, daily) and eventually giving it to a farmer, who's putting it on her hay fields in place of synthetic fertilizer. The goal is to collect 6,000 gallons this year.
The logic driving this avant-garde project of the , based in Brattleboro, Vt., is that it's foolish and wasteful to part with the precious nitrogen and phosphorus that moves from the food we eat right through us — especially when farmers have to buy fertilizer at great expense to put those very same nutrients back into the soil.