In this VORS 2025 session, panelists explore methods for composting unconventional feedstocks and share innovative approaches to processing human urine, liquid waste, and other nutrient-rich materials. Learn how these practices reduce waste, enhance nutrient management, and support soil health. From small-scale demonstration projects to commercial applications, this session will offer actionable insights and inspire new ways to transform waste into valuable compost products. 

Facilitator: Dan Goossen, CSWD

Panelists and Video time stamps:

• 1:49-21:54 Benson Colella, Wasted PBC

The potential of urine as a sustainable nutrient input for compost

Urine is rich in nutrients like nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, yet these nutrients are often lost to the watershed through traditional wastewater treatment.  This presentation will explore how urine collected from specialized toilets can serve as a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers, thus reducing reliance on mining and fossil fuels.  We will discuss the nutrient composition of urine and its regulatory and processing requirements for use as a soil amendment.  We will share preliminary results from an experiment in which commercial-scale leaf litter compost was supplemented with urine.  Those findings will compare nutrient profiles of the urine-supplemented compost to a control and share operational insights into the urine supplementation of compost at-scale. 

• 21:54-51:11 John Culpepper, Compost for Good

Composting human urine. What? Why?

Compost for Good operates a modest facility, registered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to process diverted human urine through a high temperature composting process. This Human Urine Research and Demonstration facility is open to entrepreneurs, policy makers, farmers, and others. To date we have successfully processed over 2,000 gallons of urine, producing numerous cubic yards of high quality, high value, biologically robust compost. We have also experimented with different recipes, mixing urine, food scraps, spent brewery grain, and other nitrogenous materials using densified wood pellets and wood chips as a carbon source.  In this presentation I will share our successes, and show examples of finished compost images of the various compost recipes under a microscope.

• 51:11-1:39:10 Jean Bonhotal, Cornell Waste Management Institute

Composting Eggs, Milk, Whey, Manure, Blood, and Other Difficult Liquids from Disaster

Composting liquids can be an important part of the composting process as moisture is essential for dry carbon resources.  Eggs in the billions, dairy residuals, blood, offal, liquid manure, high BOD liquids from flooding are a very difficult task, but it is doable.  We need more than one tool in the toolbox to properly dispose of liquids. Form a bowl or volcano to absorb the liquid before it’s able to hit the ground, creating these depressions in very thick carbon layers is the key. 15,000 gallons of milk waste can be placed into a 100 ft windrow weekly for 6 to 8 weeks. Mix it all together on site and load it into a loader/ truck/ bucket and form windows out of that mixture.  Composting liquids is a win/win option.