THE PISS OFF
Michigan football has never run a stat line like this one. Donate at the tailgate and your urine gets treated and recycled into fertilizer for field trials by University of Michigan and Michigan State University.
Michigan football has never run a stat line like this one. Donate at the tailgate and your urine gets treated and recycled into fertilizer for field trials by University of Michigan and Michigan State University.
Thank you to all the fans who came out! We collected 237 gallons of urine for our collaborative study into the future of fertilizer. 100 gallons from Spartans and 137 from Wolverines.
Date
November 7, 2026
Window/Kickoff
Open for donations 1:00 PM until the final whistle. Kickoff at 7:30 PM.
Hosted By
The NEWtrient Recovery Facility is part of the Nutrient Energy Water (N-E-W) Cycles Group, a University of Michigan (U-M) effort to close the loop between what we flush and what we grow. Most agricultural fertilizer today is mined or manufactured in energy-intensive processes with precarious, global supply chains. Urine can supply the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that plants crave.
The Piss Off is our first stadium-scale pilot in the United States: a home game tailgate's worth of urine donations, turned into usable fertilizers. Your urine donations are transformed into fertilizers for our research collaboration with Michigan State University (MSU).
01
Waterless urinals that keep your donations separate from everything else.
02
We pasteurize your donations and then create a 6x concentrate using a patented freeze-thaw process developed with our partners Brighwater Tools.*
*U-M has a financial interest in Brightwater Tools, which licenses U-M patented technology.
03
Our team isolates nutrients, turning phophorus and potassium into solid struvite pellets and makes custom blends for field trials on different plants, all certified by the Michigan Dept. of Agriculture.
04
The fertilizer is given a label certified by the Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development, and heads to field applications by U-M's Matthaei Botanical Garden & Nichols Arboretum and our partners at MSU's Kellogg Biological Station.
We are scaling urine recycling, from our urine-diverting toilets in the G.G. Brown Building to portable urinals at home games. Your donations of urine support a broad collaboration between U-M and MSU engineers, agronomists, social scientists, and planners. We are saving water and energy while creating local and sustainable fertilizers.
And help support our program. Buy here.
Cost: $22 · Test reads, "I donated my nutrients at the Piss Off"
Design shown is mock-up; final colors may vary.
Is this sanitary?
Yes. We follow strict handling protocols, use licensed transporters, and pasteurize all the urine we collect before starting the recycliing process.
Do I need to bring anything?
Just yourself, and whatever you need to use a standing urinal (we hope to expand to sitting options in the future).
I'm not going to the game — can I still take part?
Yes! you can donate in the 2nd floor bathroom of the GG Brown Building or buy a t-shirt.
Where can I follow the research?
Reach the team at NEW Cycles or find us on game day.
Partners