The Secret Science of Pee
Tuesday 5 October 2010 21:00-21:30
A research team at an Edinburgh University think they've cracked the answer to providing renewable, commercially viable and environmentally friendly energy from urine.
Harvesting the multitude of medically powerful ingredients it holds could become big business. An innovative Danish company is turning it into plastics; it may provide a means of easily accessing hydrogen for green cars; and it could hold the key to providing desperately needed shelter for displaced multitudes across the world. NASA have even found a novel way of cooking with it in space!
The scientific applications for this wonder substance seem almost to be without end - and the good news doesn't end there. Not only is it free but we humans alone make enough of it every year to replace the entire contents of Loch Lomond - picture a million Olympic sized swimming pools full to brimming and you're getting close - so what's the downside? Attitude. More specifically, ours. Why? Well, because this amber nectar, miracle-working wonder stuff is urine - and we go squeamish at its mere mention, an attitude that has blinded us to its astonishing versatility and potential.
In The Secret Science Of Pee, Sally Magnusson provides a truly surprising and enlightening look at some of the more extraordinary and innovative contemporary scientific applications for urine.
She asks why many are so uncomfortable with even talking about this casually despised blood product when it has been an essential part of life for centuries – and she considers the shocking environmental cost (the UK uses 65,000 gigajoules a day to pump, stir, heat and aerate our urine - that's about a quarter of the output of the country's largest coal-fired power station) of flushing away such an abundant and abundantly useful substance.
Flushing the toilet will never be the same again.
Presenter/Sally Magnusson, Producer/Pennie Latin for the BBC
captured from iPlayer, 128kbps 44Khz, runtime 28:02
Replies
The only problem is that it must be diluted. A 1:10 ratio - 1 part urine to 10 parts urine should do the trick. That's how strong the stuff is. I don't know if it will catch on as a wide-spread solution to the rising prices of anything connected to gardening, but some of us may be desperate enough to try it.
You're making a 1:10 solution. Dilute the urine to this strength
1 part urine to 10 parts water.
I have always used regular household ammonia (nitrogen) in a hose-end sprayer to give spring lawn, trees, shrubs, bulbs (after they bloom) new veg. plants, and perennials a dilute wash-down after the last frost, and things simply jump out of the ground. This is not a long term fertilizer but works as a shot in the arm to things that have gone through a rough winter.
One more tip: Use your hand-held whirlybird spreader (setting on 4) to spread regular Epsom salts on the ground around everything just before a rain. The rain will water the crystals in for immediate use by the plant. Plants become greener and healthier because of the trace elements.