Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants - Softcover

Steinfeld, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903998484 ISBN 13: 9781903998489

Publisher: Green Books, 2004

Synopsis

Dont flush it down the loo! Save your pee and fertilize your garden! Because it is not recycled, our urine is wasted and pollutes the water system. Yet it could provide 50%-100% of the nutrients needed to grow our food. Use your pee to make a liquid manure: recycle, save water and energy, and prevent pollution, all at the same time! In the 19th century you could sell your urine for a penny a bucket or 1.5 pennies if you were a redhead. Early Romans used urine as mouthwash. In some cultures, urine is used to clean wounds and as a health tonic. Urine can be used in curing leather, and as a tattoo pigment. Discover the delights of the urine-diverting composting toilet, the activists urinal, and the urinal for women; find out about customs and rituals connected with urine, the science and technology of its use, and profiles of liquid gold at work all over the world in farms and gardens. Take to the fresh air when nature calls and fertilize your garden for free with Carol Steinfelds entertaining and fact-filled book!

About this title

About the Author

Carol Steinfeld is a writer, researcher and resource-recycling specialist writing about ecological resource management solutions. She is co-author of The Composting Toilet System Book and Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling.

From the Inside Flap

Grow with the flow. Liquid Gold tells you how! Every day we urinate nutrients that could be used as fertilizer for plants, which in turn could be used to make beautiful landscapes, food, fuel, and fibre. Instead, these nutrients are flushed away, either to be treated at high cost or discharged to waters where they pollute and choke off aquatic life. Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants tells you how urine – which contains most of the nutrients in domestic wastewater and usually carries no disease risk – can be utilized as a resource. Starting with a short history of urine use – from ritual to medicinal, to even culinary – and a look at some unexpected urinals, Liquid Gold shows how urine is used worldwide to grow food and plants, while protecting the environment, saving its users the cost of fertilizer, and reconnecting people to the land and the nutrient cycles that sustain them. That’s real flower power!

Edition details

• Publisher: Green Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1903998484
• ISBN 13: 9781903998489
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 104
• Illustrator: Wells Malcolm