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Urine is the main source of some of the chemical nutrients that have to be removed in sewage treatment plants if they are not to wreck ecosystems downstream. Despite making up only 1 per cent of the volume of waste water, urine contributes about 80 per cent of the nitrogen and 45 per cent of all the phosphate. Peeing into the pan immediately dilutes these chemicals with vast quantities of water, making the removal process unnecessarily inefficient.

Human urine is actually sterile (unlike feces, urine is bacteria-free). Far from being a dirty body-waste, fresh, normal urine is actually sterile and a mixture of some of the most vital and medically important substances known to man. It contains minute amounts of proteins made by the body, including medically important ones such as growth hormone and insulin. It is estimated there is a $500-million USD-a-year market for these kinds of ingredients. Whilst the idea of recycling urine is not new, it needs thousands and thousands of liters to commercially produce products.

A fun video to promote the use of urine funnels to allow women to pee standing up rather than going in nasty toilets.