In amid of finding solutions to deal out with economic and climate change woes hitting the world, urine has become a waste-answer to empower households economically and environmental friendly agricultural input. A Malawian social enterprise organisation and one of Small Grants Programme grantees of Global Environment Facility (GEF) manufactures bionitrate fertilizer from human urine. The organisation buys urine from people to make fertilizer that farmers use in their farms without contaminating the soil. In an exclusive interview with MacDonald Nyirenda after GEF – Grassroots Environmental Partners’ Network (GEPN) workshop at River Side Hotel in Lilongwe the capital city of Malawi on 27th August 2016, the Managing Director of Environmental Industries Goodfellow Phiri said his company is changing lives of people in Malawi and conserving the environment through the manufacturing of bionitrate fertilizer from human urine. “Initially we started our business in 2012 with the funding from Global Environment Facility (GEF). Our organisation manufactures fertilizer called bionitrate from urine harvested from human. The fertilizer is nitrogenous that can be applied to any crop. “We have good relationship with GEF. The funding has made it possible for the business to grow from scratch to where it is now. At the moment we have farmers that buy our fertilizer and apply to their crops,” said Phiri. The organisation became a member of GEF network because it works with small scale female farmers who are in the interest of GEF thematic areas. The farmers are in groups of recycling wastes into compost manure to which they apply bionitrate fertilizer. “We are a private company but GEF comes in because it looks at poor people. We have target groups of female farmers that we work with. These groups of farmers recycle wastes into compost manure. They supply bionitrate fertilizer that we make to the compost manure to make it fertile and sell their compost mature to landscaping companies,” explained Phiri. People consider urine bad substance that could not be used. It was of that mentality made the organisation face resistance in introducing the technology. “Processing fertilizer from human urine is not an easy business because people do not like urine at all. In the first place did not like the idea and rejected to accept the technology but it has taken a lot of education and demonstration for people to accept the product,” said Phiri. The organisation has three sources of harvesting urine. “We have three sources of getting urine. The first source is the household toilets where we have designed toilets that separate faeces from urine. The second source is the commercial toilet inside Sungwi Market which is the very business market where people pass their urine and we collect it from there, and the third source in the community where we live. The community now has got used to our idea so if we need more urine we just advertise and members of the community bring their urine in the morning using 20 litres containers and we buy from them at MK1000 for a 20 litres container and at the same time after processing we sell the same container of fertilizer MK3000 to farmers, so it works very well; people are no longer rejecting the technology,” said Phiri. The organisation has seen three successful indicators in running the business that show the community is benefiting from bionitrate fertilize manufacturing technology. “There are three indicators that are showing that there is improvement. The first indicator is that the number of women who are using the urine for making the compost manure, the number is growing that has been there for more than 3 years and the group still exists. The second indicator is that there are more buyers of the nitrate fertilizer. For example, just 2 weeks ago one farmer has bought 300 litres of my bionitrate fertilizer. Third indicator is that when we advertise for training people how to use the fertilizer from urine many people apply for training and come for training and we charge them MK3000 per participant and shows that people are interested with this technology,” explained Phiri. The fertilizer is formed from any kind of urine from both females and males of age from six years and above. “The fertilizer is made from any kind of urine but we have the age group. If you take people less than six years of age their urine is not strong enough but any person who is above 7 years the urine is strong enough but the best urine is from people who drink beer because it has got more acid. The presence of acid it is the sign that there is a lot of nitrogen in the substance. The urine is collected from any person, whether a male or female but there is specific time when we do not collect urine from women, “said Phiri.

• published: 04 Oct 2016
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