Giving Compass' Take:

• Students from the University of Cape Town have created the world's first bio-brick using human urine, a possible pioneering method in waste recovery, recycling and upcycling.

• How can we get other universities and countries to take the innovative leaps to create sustainable products?

• Here's why cultivating your innovation ecosystem is worth the work. 

The UN’s Global Goals call for environmental action, including sustainable consumption and production, and creating cities and communities that are sustainable, and that's exactly what students from University of Cape Town (UCT) are doing.

Announcing the innovation, the university described it as “signaling an innovative paradigm shift in waste recovery.”

It’s the brainchild of Suzanne Lambert, a civil engineering student, and Vutheka Mukhari.

Lambert’s supervisor and senior lecturer in water quality at UCT, Dr Dyllon Randall, said the bio-bricks are created through a natural process called microbial carbonate precipitation.

“In this case, loose sand is colonized with bacteria that produce urease,” he said in a statement. “An enzyme, the urease breaks down the urea in urine while producing calcium carbonate through a complex chemical reaction.”

He said it is not unlike the way seashells are formed.

Read the full article about the creation of bio-bricks by Thato Mahlangu at Global Citizen.