Pee, The Way Nature Intended.

I know just a hair this side of zilch about soil chemistry, so it's no surprise I was struck dumb by Andrew Leonard's piece in Salon about phosphorous and, well, pee. Andrew does the heavy reading of the source material in Scientific American, and boils it down to this - the phosphorous we ingest is a critical element of healthy soil that we rely on to produce our food. It's fertilizer. Thing is, it seems that phosphorous is becoming a thing of some scarcity.

"How can I help?" you are surely asking yourself. All you need to do is remember what you learned in kindergarden: to put things back where they belong when you are done with them. It still applies, though we still haven't learned our lesson. When we are done using phosphorous, we tinkle it away down the drain (and eventually to the ocean).

Besides all the water wasted in every flush of our modern toilets, here's another good reason to reconsider the water closet's status quo. Leonard proposes an evolution of the basin as we know it from a evacuation tool to a seperation tool, but as far as I'm concerned, his solution is needlessly complicated. Is it time to get over ourselves and resume doing things the old-fashioned way? Cut out the middle man!

I googled "urine compost" and found this quote:

The best form of liquid addition for compost is what some composters primly call Household Compost Activator. Other people call it urine. Don't be coy about it -- this is what should happen to urine rather than wasting it by flushing it down the toilet.

I can think of at least one group of professionals that are leading the way. In cycling, it's called a "nature break."