“From piss to pilsner” is the name of the project that will collect the urine of more than 100,000 attendees of the Danish music festival Roskilde, store it in special tanks, and ship it out to nearby barley farms to fertilize the plants used in local beer production.Yes, in the environmental utopia (well, at least compared to the U.S.) that is Denmark, getting wasted while camping at a music festival allows you to practice sustainability, help local farmers, and contribute to local beer production.
“If everything turns out as planned,” reads the Danish Agriculture & Food Council website, “guests at the Roskilde Festival 2017 will be served beer fertilized with their own urine.” To help out, festival goers need only pee in a long metal trough instead of anywhere else in the field, which leads to the only problem with this win-win-win-win situation: What about the ladies? Are the good people of Denmark so callous as to ignore the burden that standing causes to women’s peeing? Of course not. Marie Grabow Westergaard of the Danish Agriculture & Food Council told The Guardian that cardboard “urine directors” are being handed out for free to make sure standing doesn’t get in the way of womens’ kidney juice contribution. It looks like women are using them, too: at least one Instagram post shows some music festival feminist fighters breaking down the piss patriarchy:
Looks like fun, and looks like something U.S. music festivals should import, along with some Carlsberg made with the urine-enriched barley of Denmark.