Would you use a 'gender-neutral' urinal?

If urine is the new ‘liquid gold’ then we also need to find a good way to collect it from half our population: women.

This is the opinion of Dr Dyllon Randall from the University of Cape Town‚ speaking at the Water Institute of South Africa’s biennial conference‚ currently under way in Cape Town.

“We combine our faeces and urine with really good quality water and we send it to a waste water plant‚” said Randall.

"Urine only makes up about 1% of the waste water but it contains more than 80% nitrogen‚ 70% potassium‚ and 50% phosphorus – these are three key nutrients needed to make any inorganic fertiliser."

His team successfully produced urine fertiliser from a waterless urinal device - made up of a 25 litre container‚ pipe and funnel that were placed at UCTs new engineering building and at a male residence.

One container of urine produced about 276 grams of fertiliser. Randall said although this process would conserve water in drought-stricken areas‚ the financial savings potential was also substantial.

“UCT uses about 8 Olympic-sized swimming pools – based on 2017 values – of flushing water just to flush urinals each year‚” he said‚ adding that UCT also requires 4 tons of fertiliser for their sports fields.

“If you collected all the urine on campus just from the urinals‚ we could produce 7 tons of fertilizer – offsetting the financial costs of the new system‚” he explained.

The idea is also moving off campus.

Property giant GrowthPoint is piloting the system at a new development in Gauteng.

The urine will be stored in the basement and then transported offsite for fertiliser production.

“By harvesting urine also from women‚ one can double the amount of fertiliser produced‚” said Janette Neethling‚ from consulting engineers Partners in Development (PID)‚ in a separate session.

Research by PID in collaboration with the Water Research Commission found that girls and women are willing to use urinals‚ especially in schools and public places.

Neethling also touched on the fact that urinals can be a more cost-effective way to meet the need for more toilets in schools that makes use of open-pit toilets.

Gender-neutral urinals manufactured locally cost about R24 000 per seat.

The conventional flushing toilet comes at about R50 000-90 000 per seat.

Liquid Gold aims to roll out about 1 000 of these urinals fitted into a shipping container to schools across the country where urine can be collected‚ stored and then transported to be processed into fertiliser.

- Supplied to TimesLIVE by the Water Institute of Southern Africa