Company Turns Urine Into Something Much More Valuable

A select number of toilets in Europe are doing double duty: collecting human waste and then turning the urine component into fertilizer. Writing for the Guardian, Chloé Farand profiles VunaNexus, the Swiss company behind "Aurin," a nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich liquid fertilizer made entirely from treated urine that's now approved for use in Switzerland and France. Special toilets divert urine to a set of tanks that scrub the urine of antibiotics and other micropollutants, pasteurize it to eliminate viruses, strip out the water, and concentrate it into Aurin.

VunaNexus' system is in place in a number of commercial and residential buildings, including one that houses one of Geneva's biggest private banks; it currently recycles about 800,000 gallons of urine a year. If it managed to magically gain access to all the urine in Europe, CEO David de Chambrier estimates it could meet roughly 30% of the nitrogen need. As Farand writes, "That's not enough to transform the fertilizer market but it provides an alternative," especially as the war in Iran "[exposes] the vulnerability of the fertilizer market." The big hurdle is cost—currently as much as 50x that of conventional products—so scaling up and getting paid for the wastewater treatment it provides are key. Read the full story for more.