Urine as Fertilizer, anyone?

May I introduce our initiative which is “Eco-Pee, Rain and Grey-water Conservation and Vegetable Gardening Initiative”.  The concept is simple and includes the collection of urine and using it as fertilizer, promoting vegetable gardening among youth members and their families and rain and grey water conservation with water to be used in the vegetable gardens.  The project gets its cue from cases around the world on the usefulness of urine as fertilizer and the fact that commercial fertilizer nowadays is very expensive with urea (45-0-0) at more than 2,000 pesos per sack. The WAND Foundation (www.wandphils.org) provides guidance and advice as well as small fund support for the implementation of the project.  Technical advice is also provided by Robert Gensch, ecosan expert based in Xavier University.  The sustainable sanitation website (www.susana.org) is one of our useful references.

At present we have distributed 120 Eco-Pees’ to 3 elementary schools and local farmers and 75 rainwater collectors mainly to local farmers.  The local farmers are youths who have stopped schooling and engaging in farming activities.  Our target for this year is to distribute a total of 1,000 Eco-Pees’ and 500 rainwater collectors and to enlist 300 youth-farmers to engage in vegetable gardening.  With the upcoming local elections, we will try to engage political wannabes to support us, and with their pictures pasted in our Eco-Pees’.  Our Eco-Pees’ are made from 20 liter-recycled containers with an inverted 2-liter container glued at to top.  The rainwater collectors are recycled 200-liter drums.  One Eco-Pee costs 65 pesos while a rainwater collector costs 390 pesos.  We plan to scrounge local households and commercial centers in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City and ask donation of empty containers and drums for this project so that our cost can be reduced further.

Our plan by October 2009 is to start selling urine as liquid fertilizer, following the experience of Linus Dagerskog (linusdagerskog@yahoo.fr) in Burkina Faso, albeit ours will be on a limited scale.  Our main target market will be small-scale vegetable garden and flower garden enthusiasts.  We will do this by installing Eco-Pees’ in public places such as chapels, market and barrio centers and collecting the urine then place it in mineral water recycled plastic bottles, label and sell it. The income we will use to fund our operation and send some of our members to school.  Our preliminary analysis shows that we will get 200 percent return of investment (ROI) with this project.