Browse by Tags

• GreenHouse: Is Pee-Cycling the (Yellow) Wave of the Future?

  I'll just come out with it straight away: This is a post about recycling urine - or rather the phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium in urine - for agricultural purposes.  Too hell with the fancy, schmancy composter - let's hear it for pee-cycling!  (O, how I wish I'd coined that phrase...) Phosphorus is an extremely important agricultural fertilizer, and like many of our other natural resources, its stores are depleting.  But urine is one of the richest sources of concentrated phosphorus in the world, and we humans are each making 100 gallons of it per year.  So you can take yourself right outside and pee all over your tomatoes and lettuce, if you are the D.I.Y.-type, or you can order one of these handy urine-separating toilets for your home, which funnel this liquid gold into a holding tank, which, when full, is picked up by "urine reclamation" specialists.  After standing for 6 months - to kill bugs or bacteria that may have been picked up on the way out of the body -  the tanks are emptied all over some lucky farmer's crops. I'm not sure how advisable a D.I.Y.-version of the holding tank would be, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some hardcore green livers out there who devised their own systems.  A low-impact and resourceful, if only a little funky-smelling, way to make that garden grow!  Not surprisingly, those oh-so-progressive Swedes are all over this one.  While restocking the world's oil supply is hopeless, and getting the federal government to recognize and help reverse the process of global warming seems far fetched, replenishing the world's phosphorus supply is as easy as taking a leak.  You gotta love that.  How long do you think it'll be 'til we can score urine-separating toilets from Ikea? Posted Jul 30 2007, 11:11 AM by Alisyn with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: recycling, green living, greenhouse, gardeningg, low-impact living, phosphorous, natural resources, urine-separating toilets, pee-cycling

• GreenHouse: The Ultimate Composter

  Nothing says “I’m a hippy, and I’m proud!” like a composting.  Fortunately, being a hippy is hot right now, and so, by proxy, are composters.  The bulky, stinky models of yore have been replaced by sleeker, more efficient cousins, making composting a sensible, easy, and fun thing to do in any household. The process is as easy as 1-2-3: A small, leak-proof countertop crock,  stores scraps, peels, shells and whatever else you want to feed it.  When it's full, have one of the kids carry it out to this supercool, rotating bin composter, small enough to fit in even the tiniest yards.  Scraps get dumped in through a little hatch, which then latches shut, so the whole load can be spun by the hand crank.  No muss, no fuss.  When used in conjunction with Compost Activator, a load is “finished” in a mere 4-6 weeks, at which point the bin can be removed and dumped into the garden for low-impact, organic, D.I.Y. fertilizer. Against my husband’s better wishes, my inner hippy can’t wait to order one of these babies and report back to you on it.  Whether it is truly odorless remains to be seen, but it can’t stink any more than the fertilizer we’re using on our garden right now, so I’m going to give it a shot.  Are you? Posted Jul 23 2007, 04:03 PM by Alisyn with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: recycled materials, Family Fun, green living, greenhouse, gardeningg, low-impact living, composting