I am sure you would have heard about ‘pay toilets’ and also used it once in a while.
You won’t find them in small towns and villages in
India.
Even in the cities they will be seen only in some Government buildings.
Just to tell you the obvious:
the term means you have to make a payment
to enter it to relieve yourself.
But,
if I say to you, instead of
“you paying for entering it” , the pay toilet owner “would pay you for using it”, it would be a great news, wouldn’t it?
That’s exactly what has happened in a town near Trichinopoly in the Southern part of India. The Tamil Nadu Agriculture University (TNAU) has placed an order for human urine in large quantity and the town administration has geared itself up to collecting it. The report says that there is always a never ending long queue in front of some public toilets in this particular town.
Why has the University asked for this material? The possible reason could be: one candidate working for her doctorate had used human urine on a banana plant as a research project. Presto! The yield was phenomenal. This news must have inspired the University to enter into serious research on the potency of human urine.
So, the human urine which is actually a waste product has found a place in the Sun and is in demand now and would be so in years to come as well.
There would be several fall outs as a result of this discovery? More “get paid toilets’” would spring up all over the towns and villages. The village Panchayats and Municipalities may keep large drums on the roadside with a notice “Please urinate here. Your urine is important for us.”
Such harvesting on public roads would create some problems. The smell ! We know that unwashed urine smells terribly after about half an hour or so. You would have noticed it in your own home toilet. If you have failed to flush out your commode after urination, a stench would develop and pervade all your rooms in course of time.
You can imagine the effect if large vessels are kept in the open for contribution by the public? People won’t be able to walk on the road without covering their nostrils; similarly inside the public get paid toilets. The manufacturers have to put their thinking cap on to find a solution. There is a good market potential in this regard.
We have been examining only the male urine. What about the female urine? It would be as potent too. Garnering this brand would call for special design of suitable receptacles. Come to think of it, the whole design of a public toilet would undergo a sea change as the process gets momentum.
The same applies to the toilets on the trains. As of now, we have been dropping the waste material on the ground spread over a large area. No more. Each passenger train could provide substantial quantity at the end of the journey if nothing is allowed to fall off to the ground. The railway engineers have to think of a suitable design in all our trains.
The airlines too could donate a large measure. Their receptacles are already on the preserving mode. All one has to do at the end of the flight is to extract out the urine part and throw away the rest.
I visualize that urine gathering is going to be a big business in the future. What is worrisome is the odour Some chemical engineers may be involved to contain and control it. We would then be safe.
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