Take a pee, make a rupee

Take a pee, make a rupee

Kathmandu, Feb 25: 
It sounds strange that people get paid for just urinating in a toilet but it is true. A local organization in Darechowk, Chitwan is offering a rupee to the person urinating in the toilet. “People got curious why the organization is offering a rupee just for urinating in the toilet and this curiosity made the people to construct ECOSAN toilets in their houses,” says Mr. Shreerendra Prakash Pokharel, President of SEWA Nepal, while addressing the talk programme entitled, “Take a pee, Make a rupee” Urine Harvesting for Sustainable Sanitation and Entrepreneurship organised by Paschim Paaila in collaboration with Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO).

Sharing about the success story of ‘Take a pee, make a rupee’ campaign launched in Darechowk of Chitwan, Mr. Pokhrel told that he promoted ECOSAN toilet not just as a toilet but as a factory to produce fertilizer for their fields. He added that the acceptance of urine in the society has also made it easier for him to persuade the locals there to construct ECOSAN toilets. “Urine is socially accepted as a disinfectant. People of Darechowk used to use urine on bruises and eye infections. Therefore it was easy to convince people that urine too can be used as a fertiliser in their fields,” he adds. He further added that the campaign was so successful that, every house in Darechowk now owns an ECOSAN toilet. They enjoy better yields from their fields, and the situation is such that, urine is being stolen nowadays. He shared an interesting fact that the urine produced by a person in a year is enough to fertilize 1 ropani of land and 1 ropani of land can feed one person for a year. There is so much scarcity of fertilizers in Nepal, yet unknowingly people are wasting valuable fertilizers (urine) everyday. Almost 3 billion Nepalese rupees, is spent on chemical fertilizers every year, therefore harvesting urine, could save this sum which in turn can be used for other development activities, said Mr. Pokhrel. 

Mr. Nawal Kishore Mishra, Director of Central Human Resource Development Unit (CHRDU) of Department of Water Supply and Sewerage shared his valuable life experiences on how he first started to experiment with urine in his own garden at his house in Baneshwor. He explained how he was embarrassed at first and would secretly check if anyone was looking before pouring urine on his plants. However, after he saw marvellous results, he has since then been proudly advocating the use of urine as fertilizer. Although the importance of using urine as fertilizer was realized not long ago in Germany, an interesting fact he shared was that, ancient farmers of Nepal had realized the potential of urine 100s of years ago; they used to make manure by mixing urine and ash below their staircase.

Many initiatives have been taken since the establishment of the first ECOSAN toilet in Siddhipur, there are over 2000 ECOSAN toilets all over Nepal today. However, he also stated the sad fact that, ECOSAN toilets and the concept of using urine is still a new concept and still not widely accepted because of lack of awareness and disgust towards urine. There is a high need to promote ECOSAN projects and to do this he suggested that there should be proper co-operation and co-ordination between policy makers, government and the users.

Source: NGO Forum for Urban Water and Sanitation