Berkeley student turns urine into fertilizer to feed the world
Channel: UC Berkeley
Date: 2015-11-16

The lack of toilets in many parts of the world is a huge sanitation problem, responsible for the contamination of ground water. Nearly a thousand children a day die of diarrhea related to water, sanitation or hygiene.

UC Berkeley engineering graduate student William Tarpeh has built a device to efficiently extract nitrogen from urine. The nitrogen is then used to create a nutrient-rich, affordable fertilizer, which farmers in the developing world can use to produce more crops. Tarpeh is collaborating with students from Berkeley's Haas School of Business, to develop a system in which urine is collected from specialized public toilets.  Users pay a small fee to use the toilets, and those user fees fund more toilets and cheap fertilizer. The system will give residents an incentive to use the toilets and it will help feed more people and reduce the water contamination problem.

Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally.  Graphics by Hulda Nelson.    Kenyan and Sanergy video footage courtesy of Sanergy.

Full Story: http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/11/16/celebrating-world-toilet-day-reinventing-sanitation/

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