Latest news with #BetsyWilliams
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Thousands of ‘No Kings' Protests Held Against Trump's ‘Militarized Birthday Party'
As Washington, D.C. prepares for Donald Trump's military birthday parade, ostensibly in honor of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, people in 2,000 locations across the country gathered for 'No Kings Day' countering the president's celebration. The protests come after Trump, who turned 79 on Saturday, deployed the National Guard and the Marines this past week during protests in Los Angeles opposing aggressive raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Law enforcement have used non-lethal weapons on protesters and journalists covering the protests against ICE. That did not stop the 'No Kings' protests on Saturday, though, as 20,000 people gathered in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Some protesters held a giant balloon, à la Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, of Trump in a diaper. 'In the context of [Trump's] escalation in L.A., it takes on greater import,' Ezra Levin, a cofounder of the progressive grassroots giant Indivisible, told Rolling Stone earlier this week about the protests. 'You need to have a visible demonstration that Americans are against authoritarian overreach.' At Ocean Beach in San Francisco, hundreds of protesters arranged themselves to spell 'No King!' when viewed from above. Underneath, people held up an upside-down American flag. Protesters shared a range of messages, but they all had concern about the Trump administration. 'The way the separation of powers is breaking down is very alarming,' Betsy Williams told The Gainesville Sun at a protest in Gainesville, Florida. 'If they can deport someone for not carrying a passport on the streets,' that means they can do anything to anyone, Williams said. 'This is what America looks like — not like some militarized birthday party that Donald Trump threw for himself a taxpayer expense,' Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who spoke at the Philadelphia protest, told CNN. Martin Luther King III, the civil rights leader's son, attended the Philadelphia protest as well. 'It's the energy that hopefully is infectious and contagious, because we as a society must stop turning on each other,' he told CNN. 'We must turn to each other.' There were not any official 'No Kings' events planned for Washington, D.C., but anti-war group CODEPINK held a protest at the military parade. The 'No Kings' protests saw little intervention from police. One exception was in Atlanta, where law enforcement used tear gas as they yelled 'unlawful assembly' and 'you must disperse' at protesters who were headed toward the highway, the Associated Press reported. A photo shows armored law enforcement with shields standing at an intersection next to a Kroger grocery store and Planet Fitness. The outlet also reported that a journalist was seen being detained. The protests in Minnesota were canceled after a politically motivated gunman killed Minnesota Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home Saturday. The gunman also shot Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, multiple times. Law enforcement said the suspect is Vance Boelter, who works for a security company, according to CNN. He remains at large. 'Out of an abundance of caution my Department of Public Safety is recommending that people do not attend any political rallies today in Minnesota until the suspect is apprehended,' Gov. Tim Walz posted on X. In Austin, the Texas Department of Public Safety evacuated the state Capitol and Capitol grounds after a person made a 'credible threat' toward Texas state legislators who planned to attend a protest against Trump, CNN reported. In Nashville, police arrested a masked counter-protester carrying a 'Don't Tread on Me' flag who appeared to be armed. The protest was otherwise peaceful.'Everybody else is being chill,' Kase Cosgrove, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and safety volunteer, told The Tennessee Lookout. 'He was trying to cause problems.' More from Rolling Stone ICE Will Pause Farm, Restaurant Raids After Trump Social Media Post Democratic Lawmaker Killed in Apparent 'Politically Motivated Assassination' Trump Has Completely Wrecked America's Brand Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Farmers embrace unexpected method that could transform how we grow food: 'It's a new frontier for people'
For centuries, humans have treated urine as waste, flushing it away without a second thought. But what if this everyday byproduct could play a role in growing tomorrow's food? In rural Vermont, a group of farmers and scientists are proving that urine isn't just something to dispose of — it's an untapped resource that can boost crop yields, reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers, and help curb water pollution. Through "peecycling," the Rich Earth Institute (REI) collects urine from over 250 participants in Windham County (about 12,000 gallons worth) to be used as fertilizer, reported the BBC. After collection, the urine is pasteurized to eliminate pathogens, then stored until it's ready for use on farmland. While "peecycling" may sound unconventional, historical records suggest that using urine as fertilizer dates back to ancient China and Rome. And the practice has many benefits. Urine is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, the same essential nutrients found in conventional fertilizers but without the environmental toll. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers rely on dirty fuels, particularly natural gas, while phosphorus mining generates toxic waste. Urine, on the other hand, is freely available and constantly replenished. "Everybody pees," Betsy Williams, a longtime participant in Vermont's Urine Nutrient Reclamation Program (UNRP), pointed out, per the BBC. "[It's an] untapped resource." Scientific studies back up its effectiveness. Research published in the Innovations as Key to the Green Revolution in Africa journal, shared by Springer Nature, found that crops like kale and spinach see yields more than double when fertilized with urine compared to no fertilization. Even in nutrient-poor soils, it helps plants thrive, making it a promising solution for sustainable agriculture. Peecycling also tackles a major environmental challenge: water pollution. Typically, urine enters wastewater systems where its nutrients aren't fully removed. When released into rivers and lakes, these nutrients fuel algae blooms, choking waterways and killing aquatic life. "Our bodies create a lot of nutrients, and right now those nutrients are not only wasted, but they're actually causing a lot of problems and harm downstream," REI executive director Jamina Shupack told the BBC. By redirecting urine to farmland instead of waterways, peecycling helps curb this pollution while also supporting food production. Do you think we still have a lot to learn from ancient cultures? Definitely Only on certain topics I'm not sure No — not really Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Despite its potential, scaling up urine recycling has its challenges. Regulations often group urine with wastewater, making it tough to integrate into agriculture. To navigate this, REI has worked closely with Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation to carve out a regulatory path. "REI has certainly blazed a trail here in Vermont, and I think we've managed to find a workable, regulatory pathway," Eamon Twohig, a program manager at the agency, told the BBC. Transportation also poses logistical issues. Since urine is heavy, moving it long distances can be costly and carbon-intensive. To solve this, REI's spin-off company has developed a freeze concentration system that reduces the volume by six times, making it easier to store and transport. While some may find the idea of collecting urine unappealing, REI's research suggests the "ick factor" is often overblown. A more common concern is pharmaceutical contamination, but preliminary research shows that even vegetables fertilized with urine contain only trace amounts of substances like caffeine and acetaminophen. "You'd have to eat a pretty obscene amount of lettuce, every day, for way longer than you can live" to consume the equivalent of a cup of coffee, Shupack added. With extreme weather events and water pollution becoming growing concerns, rethinking waste management is more important than ever. "In [the United States], people don't really think about where their waste goes," Williams noted. "It's a new frontier for people." But as Vermont's peecycling pioneers are proving, sometimes the most overlooked resources can offer the biggest solutions. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
BBC News
01-03-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Why Vermont farmers are using urine on their crops
Rich Earth Institute Urine was used as fertiliser in ancient Rome and China. Now farmers in Vermont are bringing this practice back to boost harvests and grow crops in a more sustainable way. When Betsy Williams goes to the loo, she likes to know her pee won't go to waste. For the last 12 years, she and her neighbours in rural Vermont, US, have diligently collected their urine and donated it to farmers for use as fertiliser for their crops. "We're consuming all of these things that have nutrients in them, and then a lot of the nutrients that are passing through us can then get recycled back into helping create food for us and for animals. So to me, it's logical," Williams says. Williams takes part in the Urine Nutrient Reclamation Program (UNRP), a programme run by the Rich Earth Institute (REI), a non-profit based in Vermont. She and 250 of her neighbours in Windham County donate a total of 12,000 gallons (45,400 litres) of urine to the programme each year to be recycled – or "peecycled". Windham County's pee-donations are collected by a lorry and driven to a large tank where the urine is pasteurised by heating it to 80C (176F) for 90 seconds. It is then stored in a pasteurised tank, ready to be sprayed on local farmland when the time is right to fertilise crops. Records suggest that urine was used to help grow crops back in ancient China and ancient Rome. Today, scientists are finding that it can more than double the yield of crops like kale and spinach compared to no fertiliser, and improve yields even in low fertility soils. Urine's power as a fertiliser is due to the nitrogen and phosphorus that it contains – the same nutrients that are added to the synthetic fertilisers used on many conventional farms. But these synthetic fertilisers come at an environmental cost. Nitrogen is produced using the fossil fuel-intensive Haber-Bosch process, and the mining of phosphorus creates harmful amounts of toxic waste. Urine, meanwhile, is freely available – as Williams puts it, "everybody pees. [It's an] untapped resource". Nancy Love, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan who has collaborated with the team at REI over the last decade, has found that using urine instead of standard synthetic fertiliser reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and requires around half the amount of water. Indeed, since 2012, UNRP estimates that it has conserved over 2.7 million gallons (10.2 million litres) of water through preventing toilet flushes. "I've always been a systems thinker, and our [water] system has inefficiencies in it," Love says. "What we do today is dilute the hell out of our urine, we put it in a pipe, we send it to a treatment plant, and then we pump a bunch more energy into it, just to send it back into the environment in a reactive form." In the case of urine's nutrients, its typical destination is waterways. The nitrogen and phosphorus in urine are not fully removed from wastewater when it is treated. When these nutrients find their way into rivers and lakes, they are taken up by algae. The result can be algal blooms that choke up waterways, unbalancing the ecosystem and killing other species that live there. "Our bodies create a lot of nutrients, and right now those nutrients are not only wasted, but they're actually causing a lot of problems and harm downstream," says Jamina Shupack, REI's executive director. These nutrients are food for algae – but also for crops. "Wherever you put nitrogen, it's going to help plants grow. So if it's in the water, it's helping the algae grow. But if it's on the land, it's going to help plants grow,' Shupack explains. Because of this, diverting nutrient-rich urine away from waterways and onto the land can prevent harmful algal blooms while helping farmers grow food. Everybody pees. It's an untapped resource – Betsy Williams Importantly, the REI team and the farmers they work with take steps to minimise how much of the urine runs off the land and into waterways. Application is carefully timed, so that it happens when the plant is most able to take up the nutrients – typically during the plant's more active growth stage, when it's bigger than a seedling but not yet fruiting. The soil moisture is also measured, to make sure the liquid urine will be absorbed. Despite these efforts, "that doesn't mean that there isn't going to be runoff", Shupack says. Even so, she adds, peecycling reduces the overall amount of nutrients entering waterways because it ensures that runoff from the land is the only way excess nutrients enter rivers and lakes. In the current system, synthetic fertilisers run off into waterways, as well as urine entering rivers directly via wastewater. The UNRP in Vermont is pioneering peecycling in the US, but projects in other countries are also underway. In Paris, volunteers are collecting urine to help save the River Seine and fertilise wheat for baguettes and biscuits. Swedish entrepreneurs saw the harm caused by algal blooms around the island of Gotland and came up with a product that collects urine and turns it into fertiliser. Peecycling pilots have also run in South Africa, Nepal and Niger Republic. But expanding this work comes with challenges. Shupack says that in Vermont, farmers' demand for urine outstrips supply – but scaling up collection is tricky. Regulation can create a barrier, she says. "A lot of times you go to a regulator and they say: 'We don't have a form for urine – the only place I know where to put urine is with biosolids, or within wastewater treatment.' So it's not really categorised in a way that would make sense to do what we're doing," she says. To overcome this, Shupack says that REI have got to grips with the detailed language of regulations so they could spot possible paths and partnered with organisations with existing permits – such as septic haulers – to tackle the different parts of the process, and the permits needed, in a piecemeal way. More like this: • The farmers protecting Nepal's snow leopards • The rewilded golf courses teeming with life • The beer sludge being turned into vegan milk Eamon Twohig, programme manager at Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation (VTDEC), tells the BBC that when REI initially approached them "it was clear there was no 'regulatory box' for urine treatment/recycling… REI has certainly blazed a trail here in Vermont, and I think we've managed to find a workable, regulatory pathway." REI has a good relationship with regulators in Vermont, Shupack says, and has all the permits needed to operate – including one for innovative on-site wastewater management, and a waste-hauling permit for transporting urine. Now the organisation is working with partners in Massachusetts and Michigan to move regulation on. "We're really trying to push that forward. But it's not always easy to get new environmental regulations updated," Shupack says. One of the biggest challenges, she adds, is that there is no legal distinction between human waste that has been separated at source, and combined wastewater flows that often come with greater safety concerns. There are other limitations too. Urine is heavy and cumbersome to transport, and the lorries collecting and moving it create emissions. Currently the urine in Vermont is transported locally, no more than around 10 miles (16km). But expanding peecycling programmes could involve moving urine across bigger distances, so REI's spinoff company has developed a freeze concentration system that concentrates urine by six times, and is currently being used at the University of Michigan. Plumbing, too, is a particular challenge. Love says that urine separation systems don't rely on flushing in the same way standard toilets do – which is great for reducing water use, but is problematic for the plumbing. When water doesn't flow through the system as usual, there is a risk of diseases such as Legionnaires. "There are solutions," Love says, "like looped systems in a building. But what it means is the entire plumbing process in a building is different." This is something Love and her colleagues and partners are working on, so that new buildings in the US can have urine separation systems installed from the start. "If we want any hope of sustainable water systems by the end of this century, we have to start getting the early adopters to look at these innovative solutions now," she says. These new systems will have the important goal of making urine donation effortless. Williams began her peecycling efforts using large laundry detergent bottles that travelled in the boot of her car to a central collection tank once a month. Once she was in the habit of collecting urine, Williams didn't like to let it go to waste. "I didn't even like to go anywhere where I might have to pee and not have a jug with me. It kind of became part of my routine, sort of like wearing a seat belt," she says. Even so, she has enjoyed the recent installation of a toilet in her home that separates urine (at the front) from other waste (at the back). The urine travels to a tank in her basement, which is pumped out a couple of times each year by a lorry that visits Williams and others in her area that take part in the project. "It's a nice change not dealing with the messy business of it. Making it easy for people is a biggie," Williams says. Avoiding mess is also likely to help tackle the "ick factor" when it comes to peecycling, says Williams. "It's icky and it's smelly and it's something we don't talk about," she says. But while some may be put off by the idea of dealing with their own waste, REI's research suggests that the ick factor doesn't dominate people's reactions to peecycling. People tend to be open to the idea, Shupack says, but to think that others wouldn't be. "It's this assumption that everyone else is going to think it's really gross. That initial ick factor is not as big of a deal as people assume it's going to be," says Shupack. Many people are, however, concerned about pharmaceutical content in the urine. "It's the biggest question we get," Shupack says. REI has conducted research to find out just how much of common drugs like caffeine and the painkiller acetaminophen are evident in vegetables grown using urine fertiliser. The final results are yet to be released, but the preliminary findings suggest the amount of pharmaceuticals in vegetables fertilised with urine to be " extremely small". "You'd have to eat a pretty obscene amount of lettuce, every day, for way longer than you can live" to get a cup of coffee's worth of caffeine, Shupack says. Health worries and messiness aside, Williams points out that it is our Western attitude to waste that most urgently needs to change. "Particularly in [the US], people don't really think about where their waste goes. They think about it in terms of recycling and trash to some degree, but not so much in terms of human waste. It's a new frontier for people." Climate change and water pollution can feel like impossibly big issues, but Williams doesn't let them overwhelm her. Instead, she focuses on what she can do in a small way, in her own home. "We can just do our part," she says. "We aren't perfect, but we try to at least be responsible in terms of what happens to our bodily waste." -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. 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