What a fun animation with the cardboard figures and toilet and and the green vegetables growing from a field of brown, all in waste paper materials reused and later recycled.
I wanted to share this with my readers and tell everyone: Yes! I save my pee! My husband saves his too. How? I wee into a jug then pour the contents through a funnel into a large plastic 5 litre vinegar bottle. (His method is less indirect.) One of us, every day, takes it to our compost bin. We try to integrate lots of brown matter (leaves, waste paper, cardboard, etc.) which absorbs the liquid. A good balance of brown and “gold,” when mixed with our food waste, and stirred with a garden fork regularly, creates a hot mix that decomposes more quickly. In my life of chaos and many projects, composting is something I seem to do well, and stay on top of.
There’s loads you can learn about nitrogen uptake in greens, and phosphorus as a limited and important agricultural resource, and urine as a historical thing of value.
Here you can read about mixing pee and wood-ash from a fireplace to for successful tomato growing.
I wonder if it’s gross or inappropriate to talk about this on a food blog. I am sorry if you think so. Hmmmm. Really I see eating and cooking and food growing and bodies and health and waste and ecology and resources all as part of it. Feeling my pee as useful gives me hope.
I entirely agree- urine is a precious resource and collecting it is strangely satisfying. Around where we live in Wales it was always collected for fixing the dye in flannel manufacture and the phrase “taking the piss” comes from the transport of pee from London to the mills in Yorkshire. The salors did not want to admit to working on the pee transport and would claim that they were carrying something more salubrious but people would sniff them and say “oh come on! you’re just taking the piss!”
Good for you! We haven’t incorporated that into our composting yet, but it makes good sense and I’ve known people who do.
I don’t think it’s gross at all to talk about urine on a food blog. It’s part of the natural cycle. I’m really happy to know about this. Thanks 🙂
[…] order to make the act of wasting that first resource possible? Thanks to Annie at the fabulous blog Kitchen Counter Culture for enlightening me on the benefits of urine (and for the suggestion of a post about the […]
[…] We’re pretty good composters around everything in the kitchen, and beyond, and save our pee a lot of the time, and are trying to figure out an affordable or easy-DIY compost-loo situation. We […]
[…] We’re pretty good composters around everything in the kitchen, and beyond, and save our pee a lot of the time, and are trying to figure out an affordable or easy-DIY compost-loo situation. We […]