Three decades have passed since the group of pop-rock 'Los Toreros Muertos' triumphed with a song called 'Mi agüita amarilla' with which they explained in a funny way how the urine, after being evacuated, reached the rivers and the sea , evaporated by the heat of the sun and ended, through the rain, irrigating the cities and the agricultural crops that later we had to ingest.
An ingenious, at the same time somewhat scatological, way to describe how the water cycle is carried out and the natural recycling of some fluids. The latter is very close to the humorous joke but, over the years, has proved to be quite accurate and very close to the purpose of many scientists and specialized companies that have been investigating to find an effective reuse of urine.
Well known is the large amount of nutrients and compounds that are part of the urine, which with adequate conditioning, especially to reduce the current salinity and high pH, becomes an effective natural fertilizer when irrigating plantation.
There are several companies that have launched different initiatives to recycle and give a second life to these 'minor waters', noting the places where the greatest amount of liquid is voided: music festivals.
There, during several days, the assistants drink enormous amounts of liquid -especially beer- and that until now they ended up evacuated in any corner of the enclosure or in mobile urinals that then poured directly into the sewer system.
For some years now, many of these multitudinous concerts have become large urine collectors - through special toilets - with the intention of storing the waste of those who have drunk beer and wish to evacuate it, to later treat it, recycle it and turn it into fertilizer agricultural or water to be used in irrigation.
One of those projects is 'Beercycling' - supported by the Danish Council of Agriculture and Food - which collected last year, at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, the not insignificant amount of 54,000 liters of urine from beer drinkers and which it became an efficient fertilizer with which a large Danish field of barley was fertilized and, after the harvest of this cereal, it was possible to collect eleven tons of malt with which a beer was elaborated - with the curious name of 'Nørrebro Pis Ner '- which was bottled at 60,000 units and served this year at the aforementioned music festival; The cycle of urine collection of that beer is carried out again.
In several French music festivals another initiative has been carried out: 'the Uritonnoir', which consists of polypropylene sheets which, after being properly folded, fit into bales of hay - placed at various points of the place where the event is held - and that are used as a public urinal.
The urine when coming into contact with the straw causes it to begin to decompose and in a matter of a year -according to the quantity micturized can be even in half the time- it becomes organic compost ready to be used in the fertilization of fields of cereals destined to the elaboration of new beer.
But one of the most revolutionary urine recycles - or at least pretend to be - is the one that has been carried out by the young Belgian scientist Sebastiaan Derese who, in collaboration with several colleagues from the University of Ghent, has developed a machine that turns directly the pee in drinking water, apart from separating another part that becomes fertilizer.
The device, which works by solar energy, is designed to be used in developing countries where there is a shortage of water and fertilizer for crops. Through a membrane the machine filters nutrients from urine such as nitrogen, potassium or phosphorus.
A test was carried out at a music and theater festival in Ghent where a significant amount of urine was collected, which, after passing through the corresponding filtering of the machine, in a matter of minutes became a thousand liters of drinking water that could be tasted by those present.
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