BRATTLEBORO — The Rich Earth Institute is hosting their 2022 Urine Donor Kick-Off at the Vermont Jazz Center on Saturday, April 9, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. They will be joined by prominent area-based poets to celebrate a decade of reclaiming urine as a resource in Vermont and beyond. The past year's most prolific donors will also be acknowledged as “Piss Off” contest winners.
“After two years of pandemic separation, we're excited to host this event in person,” Rich Earth's executive director Ivan Ussach said in a news release, “and to share our appreciation for this community, our farms, and our watershed.”
Urine recycling creates sustainable fertilizer for local farms, reduces downstream nutrient pollution, and conserves clean, potable water.
Founded in Brattleboro in 2012 by Kimmerly Nace and Abraham Noe-Hays, Rich Earth has more than 200 urine donors, and reclaimed over 12,000 gallons of urine in 2021. Rich Earth will launch their second community hub in Rockingham this spring.
The 2022 Kick-Off event will feature readings on peecycling and related themes from Vermont poets, including Chard deNiord, the 2015–2019 Poet Laureate of Vermont; Arlene Iris Distler, co-founder and President of Write Action; and Tim Mayo, a founding member of the Brattleboro Literary Festival.
“We live in a time that calls on all of us around the world to replenish the Earth in the most intimate way,” said deNiord, who offers some lines penned by Walt Whitman in reverence for the Earth, which “gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last” and “grows such sweet things” from those “leavings.”
RSVP to media@richearthinstitute.org. Snacks and drinks will be provided. Participants are asked to come vaccinated and with a mask to wear when not actively eating or drinking.