A popular-with-visitors music festival in Denmark and a rather ‘earthy’ museum in Italy share a common thread: putting human waste to new uses.
In Denmark, organizers of last year’s Roskilde music festival—Northern Europe’s largest—collected 54,000 liters of urine, which was used as fertilizer to grow 11 tons of malting barley, which in turn has been used to brew 60,000 bottles of a Pilsner-style beer, which will be sold under the brand name ‘Pisner.’
“Just as we have seen shops sell goods that would otherwise have been thrown out, beercycling allows us to recycle a product that is normally flushed down the drain. When it comes to circular economy, Danish farmers are some of the best in the world. If you can brew a beer with urine as fertiliser, you can recycle almost anything,” according to Karen Hækkerup, CEO of the Danish Agriculture and Food Council. More details at TheLocal.dk
Meanwhile, in Castelbosco, Italy, the Museo del Merda, or Shit Museum, is only a part of what a local dairy farmer is doing with cowpats. His 3500 cattle produce 55 tonnes of milk a day to make Grana Padano cheese, but they also produce 150 tonnes of feces.
While much of that is used as fertilizer, or processed for methane to power the farms, part of the output goes into a line of tableware and everyday objects created by blending the poo with a bit of Tuscan clay to make bricks, tiles, flowerpots, plates and jars. It’s marketed under the brandname ‘Merdacotta.’
For more pictures and details from TheLocal.it, click HERE.
Of course the Chinese were doing the recycling of waste a thousand years ago.
They reckoned they could turn a lifetime of poo (70yrs) into 22 feet of The Great Wall of China. Not only is that the biggest poo in the world – but you can walk along it too !