We-Pee News

We have just finished reading this book and cannot recommend it highly enough as a good toilet book! Life of Pee, the story of how urine got everywhere. Alchemists sought gold in it. David Bowie refrigerated it to ward off evil. In the trenches of Ypres soldiers used it as a gas mask, whereas modern-day terrorists add it to home-made explosives. All the Fullers, Tuckers and Walkers in the phonebook owe their names to it, and in 1969 four bags for storing it were left on the surface of the moon. Bought and sold, traded and transported, even carried to...

Throughout the years we've come across some pretty surprising uses for urine. This humble yellow liquid — a by-product secreted by our kidneys — has proven to be a remarkably versatile source of sustainable power and a vehicle for some seriously experimental design. Here are six examples we've come across, ranging from the practical to the genuinely bizarre. Some will make you reconsider where waste ends and resource begins. 1. For heating a house The Barn House in Japan's Memu Meadows is an award-winning experimental dwelling heated by urine. Designed by Keio University's Co+Labo department, it shelters two humans and...