Poo producer
The Netherlands has an enormous agricultural industry. Although it is a small country, we are the second largest agriculture exporter in the world. All the cattle that we have, do not only produce milk, eggs and meat, but also an overwhelming amount of poo. Every year we produce 53.66 billion kg of manure, and eighteen billion kg of that is excess. The government has tried to manage the situation, but often caused more harm than good. Moreover, out of all the dung that is produced by cattle, 80% comes from cows. Therefore, we decided to focus our project on the repurposing of cow dung.
Nitrogen emission
All this manure from the agriculture industry leads to the production of greenhouse gases, and one in particular: nitrogen. It is an essential component of the atmosphere; it makes up 78% of it. However, it is the imbalance to these natural amounts, caused by human activities, that are harmful to the environment. Nitrogen in the form of NH3 is the greenhouse gas that is mainly produced in agriculture, and specifically by the dung of cattle. Manure namely contains a lot of nitrogen, which goes into the air when not properly processed and often ends up in the ground and surface water when used as a fertilizer. With this project, we propose an innovative use of dung that steps outside of the agriculture industry and into that of the building industry.
Conflict: agriculture and houses
In 2019 thousands of construction projects came to a halt. This was due to that the Dutch high-court ruled that the government licensing system for nitrogen-emitting activities (from farming to road construction) was in breach of EU-rules. Meanwhile, the halt on construction is overlapping with a housing shortage crisis in the Netherlands. The Dutch government has been trying to find a workable solution to this conflicting nitrogen crisis, but without success so far. We propose to look at cow dung not as a difficult waste material we have to get rid of, but as a new building material with a lot of protentional. In this way, there is a change that we could at once solve both the problems in the agricultural as well as the building industry.
The Netherlands has an enormous agricultural industry. Although it is a small country, we are the second largest agriculture exporter in the world. All the cattle that we have, do not only produce milk, eggs and meat, but also an overwhelming amount of poo. Every year we produce 53.66 billion kg of manure, and eighteen billion kg of that is excess. The government has tried to manage the situation, but often caused more harm than good. Moreover, out of all the dung that is produced by cattle, 80% comes from cows. Therefore, we decided to focus our project on the repurposing of cow dung.
Nitrogen emission
All this manure from the agriculture industry leads to the production of greenhouse gases, and one in particular: nitrogen. It is an essential component of the atmosphere; it makes up 78% of it. However, it is the imbalance to these natural amounts, caused by human activities, that are harmful to the environment. Nitrogen in the form of NH3 is the greenhouse gas that is mainly produced in agriculture, and specifically by the dung of cattle. Manure namely contains a lot of nitrogen, which goes into the air when not properly processed and often ends up in the ground and surface water when used as a fertilizer. With this project, we propose an innovative use of dung that steps outside of the agriculture industry and into that of the building industry.
Conflict: agriculture and houses
In 2019 thousands of construction projects came to a halt. This was due to that the Dutch high-court ruled that the government licensing system for nitrogen-emitting activities (from farming to road construction) was in breach of EU-rules. Meanwhile, the halt on construction is overlapping with a housing shortage crisis in the Netherlands. The Dutch government has been trying to find a workable solution to this conflicting nitrogen crisis, but without success so far. We propose to look at cow dung not as a difficult waste material we have to get rid of, but as a new building material with a lot of protentional. In this way, there is a change that we could at once solve both the problems in the agricultural as well as the building industry.
