‘This is not a hippy thing’: the startup recycling urine to make natural fertiliser

Key points

• When staff answer the call of nature at the European Space Agency’s headquarters in Paris, their urine is not simply flushed away – it is turned into something much more useful.
• While urine-diverting toilets are often associated with smelly festival loos, there is nothing bohemian about recycling nutrients from human pee, said David de Chambrier, the chief executive of VunaNexus.
• The process isn’t so different from recovering minerals in used electronics.
• “Urine is a very concentrated resource.
• This is not a hippy thing to do;