glass of beer

Roskilde Festival to turn urine into beer

Organisers of the renowned Roskilde Festival have hatched a bizarre new plan that involves turning revellers’ urine into future beer.

The Danish festival attracts hundreds of thousands of music lovers from all over the globe, and this year the festival goers will be able to make their own contribution to ensuring the future of the event in years to come.

The initiative, called From Piss to Pilsner, will involve a team of specialists recycling the urine from this year’s gig – and there is sure to be plenty of that – and using it as fertiliser in a malting barley field close to Koge. And what is produced from the barley field will then be used as ingredients for the beer for future festivals.

The scheme, which is being referred to as beercycling, was devised by Roskilde Festival organisers and the Danish Agriculture and Food Council (DAFC).

DAFC head of communication Leif Nielsen noted that it was about changing their approach to waste, explaining that the amount of urine that people produced at the annual festival affected Roskilde’s environment and sewage cleansing system. He added that the initiative turns the waste into a resource.

The project has targeted gathering and recycling between 100,000 and 250,000 litres of urine during the event, with the first ‘Pilsner from Piss’ batch to be sold at the 2017 festival.