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Article

Examining Regulatory Pathways That Enable and Constrain Urine Recycling

1
Urban and Regional Planning Program, University of Michigan, 2000 Bonisteel Blvd, Art and Architecture Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
2
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, 2350 Hayward Street, 2105 GG Brown Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
3
School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Dana Building, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Sustainability 2025, 17(17), 8013; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17178013
Submission received: 30 June 2025 / Revised: 17 August 2025 / Accepted: 25 August 2025 / Published: 5 September 2025
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Technologies for Wastewater Treatment and Reuse)

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 urine recycling; wastewater; resource recovery; fertilizer; circular economies

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MDPI and ACS Style

Hoey, L.; Lippincott, M.; Sanders, L.; Blesh, J.; Love, N. Examining Regulatory Pathways That Enable and Constrain Urine Recycling. Sustainability 2025, 17, 8013. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17178013

AMA Style

Hoey L, Lippincott M, Sanders L, Blesh J, Love N. Examining Regulatory Pathways That Enable and Constrain Urine Recycling. Sustainability. 2025; 17(17):8013. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17178013

Chicago/Turabian Style

Hoey, Lesli, Mathew Lippincott, Lanika Sanders, Jennifer Blesh, and Nancy Love. 2025. "Examining Regulatory Pathways That Enable and Constrain Urine Recycling" Sustainability 17, no. 17: 8013. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17178013

APA Style

Hoey, L., Lippincott, M., Sanders, L., Blesh, J., & Love, N. (2025). Examining Regulatory Pathways That Enable and Constrain Urine Recycling. Sustainability, 17(17), 8013. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17178013

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