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Green Center Advocates for Peecycling in Cape Cod
Rich Earth hosted the Green Center for a tour of our urine recycling program in VT. From left to right: Kim Nace, Earle Barnhart, Hilda Maingay, and Arthur Davis.
As Cape Cod’s estuaries increasingly suffer from nutrient pollution, many are eager for affordable wastewater management alternatives.
Among many eco-sanitation enthusiasts in the Cape Cod area, Hilda Maingay and Earle Barnhart at the Green Center have long been shining the spotlight on the power of peecycling to divert nitrogen at the source and protect aquatic ecosystems. The Green Center Inc., is a non-profit educational institute that evolved from The New Alchemy Institute.
They hosted the first Eco-Toilet Summit in 2011 in Falmouth, convening 200 participants to explore many different sustainable toilet designs. Our Research Director Abe attended this Summit (before Rich Earth was founded in 2012) and installed a Full Circle Compost Toilet at their home. Hilda and Earle wrote a report about this toilet in 2015: A Report on A New, User-Friendly, Urine-Diverting, Waterless, Composting Eco-Toilet.
Former Rich Earth board member (and intern before that) Cat Bryars’s dissertation includes a comparison of Falmouth and Brattleboro’s urine diversion efforts in the past: Planning [and] the Sanitary City: Understanding Implications of Community-Based Ecological Sanitation Reforms in the U.S..
Now, as the nutrient pollution problems in Cape Cod are increasingly dire, urine diversion is getting serious consideration once again. Through the collaborative efforts of the Green Center, Falmouth Pond Coalition, Nutrient Networks, Cotuit Solar, Massachusetts Advanced Septic System Test Center (MASSTC), and many others, interest in urine diversion on the Cape is peaking.
Hilda & Earle pick up an order of urine collectors from Rich Earth’s Research Center.
At the Green Center, Hilda and Earle have been hosting ‘toilet tours’ at their home, which have inspired many residents in the Cape Cod area to start peecycling. They have been disseminating Rich Earth’s urine collectors to interested residents.
The Rich Earth Institute is excited to be collaborating with these groups to support their work in growing the momentum for a new peecycling program in Cape Cod.
Watch a video made by the Green Center about peecycling in Cape Cod, including segments from their trip to our community Urine Nutrient Reclamation Program in Brattleboro, VT:
Read more about peecycling on the Cape:
