Modern wastewater treatment plants are a marvel of engineering—dramatically reducing human disease and environmental issues. However, these plants are expensive to build and operate, and they contribute to environmental issues in the form of unprocessed pharmaceuticals, and excess nutrients in water systems.
AdkAction is delighted to announce that they have received a grant for their Compost for Good project from the Cloudsplitter Foundation to determine what will be required to build a research/demonstration facility to test the commercial viability of diverting large amounts of human urine from wastewater treatment plants and turning that urine into compost.
This work began thanks to a 2019 Cloudsplitter Foundation grant, when John Culpepper, one of the Compost for Good project founders, set out to determine if human urine could be processed, safely and efficiently, through a high temperature composting system. Since the vast majority of nutrients and pharmaceuticals that humans excrete is in the form of urine, diverting urine from wastewater treatment plants would prevent many of the environmental problems that result from conventional treatment methods.
After successfully producing high quality compost from urine at a relatively small scale, this grant allows the Compost for Good team to explore this simple approach to “waste” management on a much larger scale. This has enormous environmental implications, but also has the potential to create thousands of new jobs, create high value soil amendment, and save communities money by significantly lowering the cost of operating wastewater treatment plants.
Hopefully this research will include examining the failure of the defunct Clinton County Compost Plant outside of Plattsburgh. Entirely different type of composting, but foul odors can certainly be an issue with some types of composting.
There are lots of composting toilets available that are perfect for seasonal homes, cabins, RVs, boats, and other off-the-grid applications, but can’t you just dump urine on a compost pile without any treatment? Lots of people do so. I think for most people the major problem is one of squeamishness and not of any environmental problem disposing of it. Sure, this won’t work in a dense city, but in many parts of the Adirondacks a composting toilet and/or a separate urine collection and dump operation makes a lot of sense.
There is too much P in the world because there are too many People in the world. This article launches an arrow at the heart of the over population problem that could determine the end of earth civilization.
We have come to learn the vastness of the universe, yet we have no intelligent contact. We may be alone because all other intelligent civilizations in the near universe have suffered our same fate. This is a basic logic problem, not math or science.
Thankyou Melissa Hart if you let this ride.