Rather than collect and treat the copious amount of pee produced by beer-swigging live music lovers, the organizers of last week's Roskilde Festival and the Danish Agriculture & Food Council opted to put all that liquid gold to good use. A beercycling project dubbed "From piss to pilsner" invited attendees to leave deposits for local farmers to use as fertilizer for barley crops grown to make beer.
Turning festival liquid waste into fertilizer isn't exactly a new idea. You may remember a couple of years ago French design group Faltazi turned hay bales into public urinals for large festivals. The twist with the Danish scheme is that the 100,000 live music lovers from the week-long festival at Roskilde may get the opportunity to actually taste the fruits of their bladder-emptying labors.
Males could just let the fluids flow into urinals positioned strategically throughout the festival grounds, but females wanting to contribute to the project had to use a P-Mate disposable urine director. Waste from collectors and specially-designed storage tanks will go on to fertilize the barley crops in nearby fields. That malting barley will then be used to make beer for the 2017 music festival.
"The beercycling project is certainly a fascinating proposal for a sustainable solution where urine isn't just sent down the drain, but becomes a useful resource," said Henrik Rasmussen, Managing Director of the Roskilde Festival. "It is a project which extends beyond the festival itself and it underlines that the Roskilde Festival is a fantastic laboratory for testing new sustainable solutions that could benefit society."
