Marathon runners' urine to be made into fertiliser

"Bacteria is added to the urine which breaks it down into the ammonium nitrate that plants need to grow."

Why that extra processing step? Soil bacteria do the urea→ammonia step just fine. Not to mention that urea is a very safe & stable compound.

Another issue is the possibility of spreading pathogens. A gardener can deal with this by just letting the urine sit for a # of months. But perhaps that's not a good approach for an industrial process?

Btw. "pee" in the url - nice touch. :)

> Urine from thousands of women running the London Marathon is set to be captured and turned into fertiliser for crops.

> An estimated 1,000 litres of urine will be collected from nine women's urinals placed at the start.

Why only nine stations and only the woman's? Is man's not good enough, or, not so much because man always relieve themselves somewhere else than placed urinals?

... because that's just the place to get something that you need millions of tons of.