Piss-pellets for plant health
How a football club, their supporters, and an oat-drink company in Sweden got involved in a science project about your bathroom break.
Right now, the world is dependent on energy-consuming synthetic commercial fertilizers with fossil-based nitrogen, accounting for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions. We simply wouldn’t be able to grow food and feed at the scale we do without them. Alternative nitrogen-high solutions for fertilizing are acutely needed, and it turns out, the solution has been inside us all along, going down the drain.
The world is dependent on inorganic fertilizers that aren’t good for the planet.
Nitrogen is a key nutrient in synthetic and organic fertilizers that plants need to grow, build proteins and yield healthy crops. The global industry for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers emits more than or around 2,1% of total global emissions and roughly 11% of global agricultural emissions.
What's needed is a never-ending alternative source of nitrogen to replace synthetic and inorganic fertilizers, and do you know what is high in nitrogen? Well, it's that golden waste stream your body emits when you need to release pressure a few times a day! You and every other human on this soil-rich earth of ours. But here's the thing, urine shouldn't be viewed as bodily waste; it's a bodily resource! Using urine as a resource is a soil-healthy golden opportunity for people, plants and the planet if done in the right way.
We're not taking the piss, human urine is a resource!
While everyone would probably join in on a global thank you to all wastewater treatment plants, modern society wouldn't feel as modern without them; they're also a source of over-fertilization in our oceans. Well, actually, it's all of us using the bathroom, but thankfully, this is one of the more addressable sources of nutrient pollution, since we're flushing away this amazing resource and excellent organic fertilizer with essentially the same nutrient content as synthetic fertilizer.
If the world could find a way to recycle our own urine, we could reduce pressure not only on our bladders but also on the wastewater treatment plants, causing less nutrient pollution in the sea, and healthy plant growth at the same time. And this is what a two-year science project in Sweden will take a look at.
Now, urine for some science.
Oatly is part of the science project Pee for the Planet, a two-year research project in Sweden, funded by Formas, where SLU together with Oatly, Sanitation 360 and the best football club in the world, Malmö FF, are investigating whether human urine can become a circular and safe alternative to fossil-based fertilizers. In theory, urine can replace up to 30% of the fertilizers used in Sweden, and the project tests how this resource can be collected, treated and used in a practical way.
Staying within the planet’s boundaries requires more than sustainable food products – it requires a changed food system. Fertilizer is one of the most fossil-dependent inputs in agriculture today, which is why more research on local and circular solutions like urine is needed. If successful, a scaled up version in the long term could help create a food system that provides increased stability for farmers, reduces emissions and contributes to a more secure food supply.
Soil fertilizing needs to be addressed on two levels. First, we need to reduce fertilizer dependence by improving soil health and using new technology that provides greater precision in application. Second, we need to invest in a shift that can reduce dependence on imported inorganic fertilizer to local and circular solutions for the fertilizer that is still needed.
For us as a food company, this is about reducing unnecessary dependencies in the food system and showing how circular solutions can strengthen food security and our long-term ability to produce food and competitiveness.
Everyone's number one at Eleda Stadium!
A football arena with thousands of drinking supporters is the perfect microcosm to act as a pilot site for large-scale public contribution of urine. As luck would have it, the Swedish football team Malmö FF is as focused on sustainability as it is on being the world's greatest soccer team, and MFF didn't hesitate for a second to install the urinals and toilets needed for the project at their home stadium. At Eleda stadium, we can test the technology, hygiene, logistics and acceptance of recycling pee (peecycling) in practice. If it works there, we believe it can work in almost any other social environment.
Male urine, female urine, non-binary urine — every drop counts
During the football season 2026 in Sweden (Allsvenskan) we're collecting pee from football supporters at Eleda Stadion. No behaviour change is required from supporters; they simply go to the bathroom as usual. During collection, a food-grade stabilizer is added to keep it safe and capture the nutrients, especially nitrogen, which would otherwise escape into the air and cause strong smells. The setup at Eleda Stadion is 11 urinals and a unisex bathroom with a regular toilet inside the arena, plus four mobile unisex urinals near the entrance outside. For this pilot project, the goal is to collect 1000 liters of urine, enough to test the technique and operational systems at a larger scale.
Urine: from human waste to pellet fertilizer
Using human urine as a fertilizer option is not a new method for plant growth. Organic fertilizers have been used for centuries, long before industrial farming, relying on natural materials like plant matter, compost, and animal manure to nourish plant growth. There are records suggesting that urine was used as an effective organic fertilizer back in ancient China as well as ancient Rome.
Today, Sanitation360 have taken the technique for collecting and stabilizing urine, developed by SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), and spent many years driving the scientific development of how to safely recirculate plant nutrients from urine back to the agricultural field.
The collected urine from Eleda is then dried in closed containers, blended with by-products from Oatly's oat drink production and turned into pellets called Granurin – a urine fertilizer that behaves more like the granular fertilizer farmers are already used to handling. The Granurin pellets release nutrients slowly, reduce environmental impact compared to synthetic alternatives, and can be used for a variety of crops and vegetables in plant rows, flower beds, oat fields, and football pitches.
Compared to the diffuse runoff from animal agriculture, which is genuinely hard to control field by field, these toilet systems are centralized and engineerable. Recycling urine before it ever hits the wastewater treatment plant means fewer excess nutrients flowing into rivers, lakes, and the Baltic. It means less nitrogen and phosphorus ending up where they cause harm, and more ending up where they actually help.
Oatly aims to explore the possibility of developing food products made from oats cultivated by SLU, using the Granurin pellets at a test farm in Sweden. Full circle collaboration. The project is also supported by The City of Malmö and VA Syd, one of Sweden's largest waste and wastewater organisations, who contribute expertise in municipal water and wastewater services and provide opportunities for further upscaling.
Why not let urine be a liquid fertilizer?
Plenty of home growers are already using urine in the garden straight from the source, spiking their watering can and showering the soil organisms in the hope of some root growth. They apply it directly to compost piles, compost bins, raised beds, or rows of sweet corn and other vegetables. So why bother with the pellets? A few reasons.
Scale
Collecting urine from tens of thousands of football supporters and storing it as a liquid would require enormous tanks, complicated logistics, and a transportation footprint that would eat into the environmental gains. Drying it concentrates the nutrients and makes the end product easier to handle, store, and ship.
Hygiene and safety
While human urine is generally considered low-risk, processing it into a stable pellet (which includes heat treatment) further reduces any concerns and makes the product more useful for commercial agriculture, where standards are (rightly) strict.
Familiarity
Farmers know how to spread granular fertilizers. They already have the equipment, the timing, the muscle memory, and storage space. Pellets fit into existing workflows without asking anyone to redesign their season, that might not be the case for liquid urine.
Concentration of nutrients
When urine is in its raw liquid form, the three primary macronutrients essential for plant growth, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (Kalium), are so diluted that you have to spread very large amounts to achieve enough. The concentrated Granurin pellet is more effective and has levels Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium similar to inorganic fertilizer.
From football season to growing season with an organic fertilizer
When the football season is over and we've collected enough of supporter-fueled pee, it's time to move the research towards the fields. SLU’s field trials will initially focus on analyzing the nutrient composition of Granurin, specifically its content of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The team of researchers will assess the stability and consistency of these nutrient levels, establishing a foundation for future agronomic evaluations.
Granurin offers several important benefits that make it highly relevant for these trials. Nutritionally, it stands out among organic fertilizers due to its high nitrogen content (), allowing it to better meet the performance requirements of modern agriculture. Its nutrients are soluble in water and readily available for plant uptake, meaning its function is similar to mineral fertilizers in terms of efficiency and yield potential.
In addition, Granurin contributes to circular nutrient systems by recycling human urine, which has documented climate and environmental benefits compared to conventional fertilizer production. Together, these qualities position Granurin as a high-quality, sustainable alternative within organic farming systems.
A nutrient-rich earth without the ick factor
There already exist many organic fertilizers, like manure, recycled residues, and wool pellets but they're far from enough. The reason for focusing on pellets made from pee combined with other organic material, like our oat residue, is that pee is safe to use as fertilizer and easy to treat and clean from residues of strong medicines for instance. Unlike human faeces, pee is more cost-effective to handle, requires less advanced technique because faeces contain higher levels of heavy metals and pathogens. Also, the dry, odourless, hygienic pellets have no ick factor, which makes the farmer's everyday life a little easier.
Why Oatly cares about urine plants fertilizers
At its core, it's about transforming and rethinking the food system. Oatly’s ambition is to help shift the food system toward a more just, nutritious, and abundant system that operates within planetary boundaries. That includes supporting an agricultural shift to regenerative, low-impact, plant-centric production. One example of this is Oatlys FARM program, which incentivizes practices that increase soil health and have environmental and financial benefits to land and farmers. Part of this programme is supporting farmers in reducing the fertilizer they use. Read more on the progress of our FARM program in our Sustainability Update 2025!
It truly is a piss project
The experiment is conducted in Malmö, Sweden, because it's the hometown of Oatly and all the actors are Swedish organisations. Sweden is also a country highly dependent on imported, energy-consuming, chemical fertilizers and would benefit greatly from a solution like this project proposes. It's a path toward stronger food security, reduced eutrophication in the Baltic, and a more resilient agricultural system that builds soil organic matter rather than depleting it. A circular system where the nutrients in our food come back around to grow more food, instead of being treated as a problem to flush away.
In conclusion, Pee For the Planet is a true piss project, and we wouldn't want it any other way.