FLUSH - Nutrient recycling in housing area
Communications lead in sustainable housing area transformation for municipality of Tuusula
Phosphorus recycling is a wicked problem: In agriculture we buy industrial fertilizer, it leaks into lakes, pollutes, and society has to manage our wastes, that also contain phosphorus, that we do not yet recycle back into food production. The project brief included managing and mapping the material flows of phosphorus in the Puustellinmetsä housing fair area.
Our background research for the project was conducted through discussions with experts and extensive desktop research. We then empirically studied the level of public knowledge and attitude towards phosphorus and especially recycling urine into fertilizer. The results were that the public’s knowledge of phosphorus was weak but more than two thirds of the participants responded positively to the idea of nutrient recycling from urine.
We analyzed, mapped and visualized the flows of phosphorus in a housing area system. We calculated the approximate percentages of household phosphorus flow: 10 % in food waste, 60 % in urine and 30 % in feces. Our conclusion was that urine is the most impactful and simple way to recycle nutrients straight back to the fields. The biggest challenges that we found were social acceptance, awareness of the issues, scatteredness of the stakeholders and the branding of phosphorus recycling (taboos). As we were already addressing awareness with our work, we decided decided to focus on the stakeholder scatteredness and branding.
We invented and organized the FLUSH 2030 workshop with nutrient recycling theme to create connections between 10 different stakeholders, ranging from members of the Finnish parliament to farmers and housing fair representatives. The practical outcome of the workshop were visions and transition paths created by the participants, but more importantly, awareness in different areas of the nutrient recycling chain, and changed attitudes of participants.
The practical design outcome our work is IKI-korttelit concept, that utilizes the values of the Rykmentinpuisto with the aim to brand sustainable living for bigger audiences. The technical solutions of IKI-korttelit include the small scale solutions for food and toilet wastes mapped and presented by the group. Three steps for recovering and recycling phosphorus were defined based on the workshop and research to illustrate the different levels ease and social acceptance of the solutions: 1. Food waste 2. Urine 3. Feces.
My responsibilities included leading the FLUSH 2030 nutrient recycling tackling workshop, where I got to tell MP:s and farmers to draw how to make toast, team and stakeholder communications, a bit of graphic design and presenting in public. Take a look at our report here. Workshop images by Simone Menge, final system visualisation by Suvi Järvi.
“Presentation was excellent and engaging! Major achievement was to convince Tuusula of the importance of the topic. Overall good work based on very demanding brief!”