On This Earth

A blog about clean water, interesting toilets and how we can do better for our beautiful world

Tag: urine

  • Profile: Behind the scenes of the podcast Liquid Gold

    Profile: Behind the scenes of the podcast Liquid Gold

    Kerry Tozer and Jordan Roods were new doctoral researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) when Kerry saw an ad for a competition posted by the university’s podcast studio. The prize was featuring the winner’s research. Wouldn’t it be cool if their work were turned into a podcast? They entered.

    “We were very surprised when we actually won,” says Kerry, “because it was a university-wide competition for both students and staff.” Although they were in the early days of their research, they worked with producers at UTS Impact Studios to create All That We Touch: Liquid Gold, a sound-rich podcast that takes listeners on a journey from Australia to other continents, unpacking the looming nitrogen and phosphorus crises. It showcases how nutrients in human urine can be recycled to revolutionize the way we grow our food and care for our ecosystems.

    Kerry, Jordan and others in the recording studio
    In the studio, producing All that we touch: Liquid Gold. Clockwise from left: Kerry, Jordan, Associate Professor Dana Cordell, and Producer Britta Jorgensen. Courtesy of UTS Impact Studios.

    Nice work!

    Kerry and Jordan are social scientists at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), UTS. Their doctoral research is part of a broader public-private collaborative called the Nutrients in a Circular Economy Research Hub (NiCE Hub). Funded by the Australian Research Council, NiCE Hub connects researchers across seven Australian universities with water utilities, government, industries and international organizations, like the Vermont-based Rich Earth Institute. Scientists at NiCE Hub study ways to collect and recycle nutrients from urine to develop safe and effective renewable fertilizers. 

    In the podcast, listeners learn that UTS is the first university in Australia to have a building with a urine diversion system. After the urine from its toilets is transported and stored, it is treated, resulting in a commercial-grade liquid fertilizer that can be applied to garden plants and farm crops.

    Bottoms Up! Professors Stuart White and Jason Prior join Kerry and Jordan in celebrating golden vials of liquid gold, the urine-based fertilizer developed at NiCE Hub. Courtesy of UTS Impact Studios.

     “It’s such an interesting and fun topic,” says Jordan, “and I think everyone who listens to the podcast positions themselves in that system — giving something from your body to grow the food to feed the population.”

    A diverse duo

    Jordan grew up by the coast in Sydney. He studied social and political sciences and law at UTS before pivoting to work on ways to “close the loop between the bathroom and food system,” as he describes it. He’s interested in how the circular economy could be more effectively governed through new rules, like laws, zoning and plumbing codes (“basically all that boring stuff,” he jokes), as well as partnerships and community education. Jordan aims to improve outcomes for people and our planet by shifting our value systems, but doing so requires a high level of coordination among those who haven’t had exclusive responsibility for nutrient recycling. 

    For now, he and others within the NiCE Hub see the most potential to grow food in hydroponic settings, where regulations for using urine-based fertilizers are less stringent than for land-based agriculture. 

    Before joining ISF/UTS, Kerry focused on a different type of sustainability in her former career: managing corporate supply chains. Now she’s working on ways to scale up the circular supply chain — both the people and the economic systems — all while encouraging the recovery of nutrients. She wants to focus on the customer and create an economy around urine recycling, moving beyond simply donating pee, she says. 

    “We need something that’s going to be easy and convenient, and not require a lot of handling,” Kerry explains. The toilet should look like a normal ceramic bowl or urinal; that way, people are much more likely to use it.

    For Jordan, it’s important to understand what people using the system think. To get feedback, he and Kerry added a survey to the podcast.

    In their wildest dreams…

    What would be their idea of a successful circular nutrient economy in the future? 

    Kerry imagines new housing being designed with separate plumbing to collect urine. The urine fertilizer could be used by struggling farmers or even on cricket playing fields. She would likestrong community awareness programs that create some hype and get people involved. 

    Jordan is keen to start larger projects, like the one in Cape Town, South Africa, where huge amounts of urine are collected from urinals in the DHL Stadium. “I would be interested in trying that in Australia,” he says, partly because it would save water, but also because it represents more equitable sanitation. “I think we’re at a point in history,” he adds, “where we can’t continue to do business as usual. We’re seeing that play out everywhere — these linear approaches to growing our food, dealing with our waste; it’s just not tenable anymore. Urine offers us a way to close that loop.”

    And if we don’t? “We continue to waste resources, waste nutrients,” says Kerry. “We continue to be disassociated from our own bodily functions. We just get further and further away from what connects us to the world.” 

    Kerry was influenced during her youth by frequent visits to the Blue Mountains National Park near Sydney, and says, “I have this really deep love of nature, and I hate seeing the pollution and destruction. I think there are a lot more regenerative ways we can still have a civilized urban life that don’t impact on our beautiful natural environment.”

    Want more?

    • Listen to Kerry and Jordan speak as part of a panel on story-telling at the virtual Rich Earth Summit, November 4, 10:30-11:30 a.m. Eastern US time.
    • Respond to their survey about whether their podcast influences public awareness, perceptions, and willingness to engage with peecycling.
    • Check out the two bonus episodes of All That We Touch: Liquid Gold.
      • Liquid Gold bonus: All That We Touch goes to SXSW. This 2025 live recording at South by Southwest (SXSW) Sydney is a panel discussion among experts who dive deeper into food security, responsibility for pollution, and other topics crucial to conversations around the circular nutrient economy. Basically, a policymaker, water utilities manager, researcher and garlic farmer sit down for a chat about peecycling.
      • All That We Touch … at the pub. During this live recording from Gadigal land, Sydney, Jordan and Kerry share a drink with Professor Stuart White, Director of ISF, and discuss which is stranger: Recycling the nutrients from our pee or the fact that humans are the only species on earth that doesn’t recycle its nutrients.
    • And finally, you can vote All That We Touch: Liquid Gold for the global Signal Listener’s Choice Awards (Voting closes Thursday, October 15).

  • Kenyans safely recycle human excreta into fertilizer and help out Lake Victoria

    Kenyans safely recycle human excreta into fertilizer and help out Lake Victoria

    A team of entrepreneurs and researchers in Kisumu, Kenya is producing a biochar-based fertilizer from source-separated human excreta. Through their work they hope to keep excess nutrients out of Lake Victoria, address food insecurity, and improve quality of life. In this recording of our Spring 2026 webinar, Cornell University Professor Rebecca Nelson, an expert on the Circular Bionutrient Economy, describes the project.

    The city of Kisumu, Kenya lies at the northeastern edge of Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa and home of the earth’s largest freshwater fishing industry. For local farmers, high fertilizer costs and depleted soils make it hard to maximize production. Meanwhile, excreta from informal settlements—communities without running water or sanitation—contribute to the harmful algal blooms in Lake Victoria that regularly kill thousands of fish.

    To solve the three-pronged problem of runaway nutrients, food insecurity and poor quality of life, local enterprises are partnering with nonprofits and scientists to find solutions.

    At the heart of the partnership is a farmers’ group called Kisumu Young Agripreneurs (KIYA) that has supported 500 farms and trained and mentored over 3500 youths. Roy Odawa, who heads up KIYA, works closely with an enterprise called Fresh Life, which provides and maintains 2,000 waterless, pee-and-poop-separating toilets in Nyalenda.

    One of Fresh Life’s 2,000 waterless toilets, which separate urine from feces. Photo: Rebecca Nelson

    Professors Nelson and Charles Midega, executive director at Poverty and Health Integrated Solutions in Kenya, are central to the project. Nelson teaches and conducts research at Cornell University that dovetails with this partnership in Kenya. “This is a dream come true for me,” she says. “Nyalenda is the most favorable place to do this work; every day we’re making progress.”

    Roy Odawa and Rebecca Nelson add human urine to biochar made from human excrement. Their goals? Locally made fertilizer and a cleaner Lake Victoria. Photo: Jon Miller

    To make the fertilizer, the team converts the contents of the poop bins (feces plus sawdust or rice husk) into biochar and then dries treated urine onto the biochar. The resulting product, high in carbon and nitrogen, is supplemented with additional phosphorus that is derived from urine by precipitation. The biochar is a porous, carbon-rich soil builder (similar to charcoal) that is free of pathogens and organic contaminants. Fresh Life, in cooperation with the local wastewater treatment plant, has provided literally tons of human urine for the project. Now their partners can produce a beautiful granular fertilizer for crops that outperforms commercial fertilizers in greenhouse trials.

    Local fertilizer being made in the greenhouse from human excrement and other carbon sources.
    Photo: Rebecca Nelson.

    “I think we’re onto something important, building on Fresh Life’s big network of source-separating toilets here,” says Nelson. “With the fertilizer crisis, we can really do something for farmers as well as for the unsewered majority. If we gather materials from the Fresh life toilets, instead of the company taking them to the wastewater treatment plant, we can make fertilizer, and thus it’s cheaper for the toilet company. They can expand the number of toilets, and it’s a positive feedback loop.”

    On This Earth co-sponsored this webinar with Greywater Action and the Rich Earth Institute on May 11, 2026.

  • Cape Cod conundrum, part 2: A smorgasbord of sanitation options

    Cape Cod conundrum, part 2: A smorgasbord of sanitation options

    (Part 1 is interesting, too!)

    There’s no easy answer to Cape Cod’s sanitation conundrum. Some solutions are expensive and invasive while other — cheaper — options haven’t yet been perfected for community-sized applications.

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  • Cape Cod conundrum, part 1

    Cape Cod conundrum, part 1

    Part 1: Life on a (polluted) sandbar

    Cape Cod is a beautiful and fragile place. When the glaciers retreated thousands of years ago, they left a sandy peninsula shaped like a bent arm off the coast of our continent that is reshaped each day by wind and water. Ocean breezes float from sand dunes and grasslands to the broom crowberries on the heath lands and through pitch pine forests. Nearly 900 freshwater ponds are deep enough to connect to the groundwater, which is the only source of drinking water for Cape Cod residents.

    With a footprint just slightly larger than that of New York City, the Cape is small but popular. From 2019 to 2024, 20,000 people moved to Cape Cod. More than 232,000 residents live there year-round, and many seasonal residents are staying longer than in the past. Each year a whopping 5.5 million tourists visit.

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  • For these Parisians, produce starts with a pee

    For these Parisians, produce starts with a pee

    On a Wednesday evening in France, Nicolas nestles two jugs of yellow liquid into his bike panniers and rides to a small warehouse where he’ll get produce from a local farmer. After he picks up carrots, greens and potatoes, Nicolas leaves something for the farmer: his urine.

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