Urine as fertilizer

[watervole]

I've been wondering about this for many years, ever since visiting the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales where they had collection bottles in the gent's loos.

I've just found a report of a study done in Finland that says it works every bit as well as conventional fertilizers and that urine is virtually sterile and thus there is no health

Comments

[mkillingworth]

Urine has long been known to be sterile when first out of the body. Medics in Vietnam were taught that in the event of treating an evisceration, one should cover everything as much as possible and urinate on it to keep it moist with as little contamination as possible.

You learn really strange things when you're a paramedic.

[jthijsen]

Urine does seem to be a good fertilizer, but the problem is that it also contains whatever medicines we swallow or their breakdown products. So if you're on the pill, then waveney will be ingesting female hormones as well along with the tomatoes.

Medication in urine

[jthijsen]

Do the tomatoes absorb the hormones?

Re: Medication in urine

[jthijsen]

I've no idea, I suppose it depends on the complexity of the molecules. I do remember reading about a project where urine was collected separately (in Sweden, I believe) and that there were some concerns about this for exactly that reason. But I read the article just before posting the answer and as you can tell from the date, that's more than a year ago, so the specifics are a bit hazy by now.

Re: Medication in urine

[watervole]

Read http://www.ramiran.net/doc04/Proceedings%2004/Richert_Stintzing.pdf

It's Swedish, but I don' know if it's the study you had in mind.

They seem to conclude that the risk is low becasue of degradation of hormones in soil and the root barrier reducing the uptake of complex molecules. However, there hasn't been a lot of research done in this area.

[epistrophia]

If you "Listen Again" to Gardeners' Question Time from Sunday (don't know if that's the repeat or the original airing, actually, but it's the only one I ever hear) they had a question on just this subject, which led to quite a bit of discussion. I can't remember any details, because I was doing other things at the time, but it might be useful to you.

Fertilizer

[grizlbr]

I am on septic so I can bottle urine to use in front yard or let it drain in back. Using yellow containers to recycle and reduce water use.

Re: Fertilizer

[watervole]

Makes sense to reduce the load on teh septic tank and fertilise the yard at the same time.