Examining Regulatory Pathways That Enable and Constrain Urine Recycling

Lesli Hoey (), Mathew Lippincott, Lanika Sanders, Jennifer Blesh and Nancy Love
Additional contact information
Lesli Hoey: Urban and Regional Planning Program, University of Michigan, 2000 Bonisteel Blvd, Art and Architecture Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Mathew Lippincott: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, 2350 Hayward Street, 2105 GG Brown Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Lanika Sanders: Urban and Regional Planning Program, University of Michigan, 2000 Bonisteel Blvd, Art and Architecture Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Jennifer Blesh: School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Dana Building, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Nancy Love: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, 2350 Hayward Street, 2105 GG Brown Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 17, 1-25

Abstract: Today’s linear nutrient flows are rooted in a long history of agronomic and wastewater engineering strategies that have created cascading environmental, social, and economic side effects, signaling the need for more holistic and circular approaches. Our examination of the regulatory pathways that enable and constrain urine recycling—an underutilized approach to repurposing human waste as fertilizer—addresses a persistent research gap related to the mainstreaming of transformative technologies. Framed around policy process theories—Street Level Bureaucracy and Multiple Streams Theory—our methods include a review and mapping of 54 regulatory documents; action research where we reflect on our own efforts to expand urine recycling; and interviews with 16 practitioners and regulators in four states which, to our knowledge, are the only places in the US with efforts to scale up urine recycling in community settings. Given its circular nature, a key challenge we find is a lack of clarity around which sectors, or what scales of government, “own” the decision to allow the collection and use of urine as a fertilizer. Working around these challenges, we show how practitioners use many practical strategies to simplify the approval process and reduce the risk aversion regulators face when confronted with ambiguous rulemaking.

Keywords: urine recycling; wastewater; resource recovery; fertilizer; circular economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/17/8013/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/17/8013/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:17:p:8013-:d:1743240

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().