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Community-Scale Peecycling Updates
Congratulations to the 2024 Piss-Off Champions!
Urine Donor Potluck
We hosted a potluck to celebrate the community of over 250 urine donors who contribute their ‘liquid gold’ to our peecycling program. We shared research updates about what we’ve been able to learn through the unique supply of community-collected urine that they give us as well as some of the ripple effects we’ve been seeing from what our peecycling program has inspired around the world, from Wasted*’s portable toilets in Burlington, Vermont to OCAPI’s community-scale Enville project in France. Urine donors also shared with us their hopes, dreams, and questions about urine reclamation.
Urine Depot Upgrade
We’re giving our Brattleboro Urine Depot a long awaited upgrade! Over the years, we’ve been accumulating a wishlist of improvements that will streamline maintenance and improve the urine donor experience at our first of two urine depots in Southern Vermont. Donate here to support this project – every dollar donated before May 1st will be matched, thanks to the generosity of the Apple Tree Fund.
Yurtin’ Donors
This winter, we made a “Yurt John” in collaboration with Dickinsons Reach Yurts, Sloyd Sunday’s Southeastern Vermont chapter, and the Society for the Preservation of Outhouses–led by Rich Earth’s Finance Director Mike Iacona. This tiny, resource-recovering yurt was made for the Brattleboro Art Museum’s Artful Ice Shanty event, on display at the Retreat Farm last February.
From the exhibit description: “There is a stunning simplicity to the “Yurt John,” created to look like a tiny beautiful wooden yurt composting outhouse. 19 people pitched in over the past month to craft this shanty out of slab wood from Kerber Farms Sawmill in Guilford. The collaborators appreciate the concept of taking sawmill waste wood and transforming it into a functional structure which will in turn collect human waste and transform it into fertilizer. After all, waste is really just a resource that’s out of place. It’s important to properly compost waste to ensure that all possible pathogens are killed, but it’s not a complicated process. After composting, the nutrients going into a compost toilet are applied under fruit and nut trees, keeping them out of waterways and preventing pollution downstream.”
Dickinsons Reach Yurts facilitates community yurt building workshops. Sloyd Sunday of Southeastern Vermont is a community group that is based on skills sharing and the use of hand tools to learn crafts. Artful Ice Shanties, an outdoor display of fanciful ice-fishing-inspired structures, was on view last February at Brattleboro’s Retreat Farm. (Rich Earth also has a urine diversion installation in the Retreat Farm’s event barn.)
