Check out “Roskilde”, Europe’s largest music festival, held in Zealand, Denmark and which is going on now with performers which include Florence and the Machine, Sir Paul McCartney and Pharrell Williams.
The project, officially called “From Piss to Pilsner”, hopes to “re-purpose” up to 25,000 litres of urine – which is hoped to be stored and then taken to nearby fields where it will be used to fertilize barley – from 100,000 people at the festival to help create 425 kegs of beer. Believe it or not, “beercycling” (as it has reportedly been formally dubbed), is a joint initiative between the Danish Agriculture and Food Council (DAFC) and the festival’s organizers. Men are actually asked to urinate into a metal trough with a sign reading: “Don’t waste your piss. Danish farmers can turn it into beer again.” It is actually hoped that by 2017, guests at the Roskilde Festival will be served beer that has been fertilised by their own urine this year.
Per Marie Grabow Westergaard, who is reportedly with the DAFC: “We’ve got urinals right next to the stages where the acts will play, so we’re hoping to collect some rock star pee as well.” Per Leif Nielsen, Head of Communications for the DAFC, this “initiative” is also intended to have a positive effect on the local environment as: “Beercycling is about changing our approach to waste, from being a burden to being a valuable resource. Today, the huge amount of urine produced at the festival is having a negative impact on the environment and the sewage system and treatment plant in Roskilde. Beercycling will turn those many litres of urine into a resource.” All that I can say about this story is that it brings a whole new meaning to the never happily used expression that “this beer tastes like piss”.
Those crazy Danes…
And to think, there is actually a “Crazy Dane” beer already
… oh the irony