Enviro-Revolution – a Waste of Effort?

So what have you done for the environment lately? Enviro-Revolutions takes a look at the bizarre, the offbeat, the innovative, the impossible and the cutting-edge inventions and ideas to clean up and protect our environment. Each week, we will bring you a few new ideas, and offer you a few new challenges to meet in your eco-efforts.
First on the list is a real waste of energy – the peepoo. A small biodegradeable bag coated with a thin film of urea, the peepoo is used as a portable toilet. Once a person defecates within the bag, the urea works to turn the waste into fertilizer. The bag is made of thin gauze, which opens into a funnel shape to catch the .... well, I am sure you know. The bag, invented by Anders Wilhelmson, is then closed, and can be stored, odourlessly, for a day or so before being disposed of.
Keeping with the theme of bodily waste, scientists in Singapore are using human urine (and, I suppose, any other urine that they are willing to gather) to create a chemical reaction to power a basic battery. Topping an assembly of magnesium, copper & copper chloride, the urine produces as much power as an AA battery. No word on whether it is Duracell or EverReady. Just that, so long as we need to keep going and going, so will the battery.
Staying with Singapore, we turn Dr. Sung Do Song, the co-founder of Agro Genesis, who claims that his company has invented a fertilizer named Miracle Sweet, which can replace up to 100kg of common fertilizer per hectare. Miracle Sweet is environmentally friendly, made only of natural ingredients. By applying the fertilizer directly to the seeds, the excess fertilizer that normally leeches off into the soil with normal chemicals is not lost. So, with less waste and natural ingredients, Miracle Sweet provides an ecological advantage to standard NPK fertilizers.
For our last enviro-revolution, we visit Andy Tomlinson of Wincobank, England. A more conventional invention, Andy’s creation consists of a thermostatic valve that attaches to a hot water boiler pipe. By controlling the water that emerges, it prevents the run-up of cool water that inevitably accompanies hot water use, as the water makes its way from the boiler to the tap. Only the water at the required temperature is allowed to egress, cutting down on both energy and water use.