Waste from hundreds of attendees at the Boomtown festival in the United Kingdom was used to produce 540 liters of fertilizer — which will help create a forest in Wales.
A team of scientists will plant 4,500 trees in a national park with the help of a fertilizer made from urine of spectators who attended the Boomtown festival.
The fertilizer was created by the British startup, based in Bristol, which connected its unit to a toilet block used by 700 attendees at the festival, which took place in Hampshire in July last year.
During the 2025 edition of the event, the urine was transformed into 540 liters of fertilizer, which will now be used to grow native treeslike beech, on the edge of Bannau Brycheiniog, also known as the Brecon Beacons, in Wales. Throughout the project, which will last three years, urine from other sources will also be used.
On Thursday morning, a Scots pine seed was planted at the site to mark the start of the initiative, says .
Second Lucy Bell-Reevesco-founder of NPK Recovery, the tests already carried out have shown that the company’s fertilizer It’s so effective as commonly used alternatives.
This will be the first project in which the product will be tested on trees. “Using waste to grow trees is a circular solution which can revitalize our native species in difficulty”, he stated.
“We need to stop flushing down the toilet nutrients that grow food and grow trees, and start using them to strengthen our fertilizer security. After all, it looks like we won’t be running out of urine anytime soon,” Bell-Reeves added.
“I like the idea that, at the end of this three-year project, festival-goers will have helped to create a young Welsh forestwhich could prosper for hundreds of years.”
In April last year, the company collected 1,000 liters of urine in women’s urinals at the London Marathon, which were then turned into fertilizer.
The company uses bacteria to recover nitrogen and other nutrients naturally present in urine, creating an odorless liquid fertilizer. NPK Recovery Bring a mobile laboratory to eventswhich allows urine to be transformed into fertilizer on site.
As part of the Welsh project, the company established a partnership with the charity, co-founded by the author and cyclist Rob Penn.
Over the past five years, the organization planted more than 500,000 trees in the region, and reached halfway to its goal of one million, with a view to recovering the landscape.
“We are very excited to participate in this pioneering project, which has implications for the future of sustainable forestry,” said Penn.
“For a small organization like ours, collaboration is essentialand we are delighted to be working with NPK Recovery, which is bringing innovation to a sector of the industry that needs it”, he concluded.
