5 Most Unexpected Uses For Pee And Poop: Perfumes, Food, Fuel And More

Expelling waste in the form of urine and feces is about as normal as you can get. Everyone does it, but the results are usually just discarded and forgotten about. However, some have found surprising ways to transform pee and poop into things we can use and consume in our daily life.

Perfume

It turns out you can turn whale poop into a lucrative business. On a beach in England, Ken Wilman and his dog Madge found a smelly, yellowish-gray lump that turned out to be ambergris, a fatty substance that forms in the digestive tract of sperm whales usually around sharp objects like squids' beaks.

The ambergris, after it is pooped out by sperm whales, could be used as an ingredient in luxury perfumes like the famed Chanel No. 5, according to Huffington Post. Molecular biologist Christopher Kemp said this substance could fetch very high prices as only one percent of the 350,000 sperm whales can produce ambergris.

The chunk Wilman found was estimated to be worth around $68,000 to $180,000, according to The Mirror.

Food

That's right, you can actually eat poop and not get violently sick. As part of a project initiated by Tokyo Sewage, Japanese scientists attempted to find practical uses for excess sewage. During their investigation, they found that human waste could be transformed into a meat-like substance by separating proteins from the bacteria in the poop, Digital Trends has learned.

Another method of making food out of human waste was discovered by scientists who made sausages using bacteria from baby poop, Live Science reported. Their process follows the tried and true methodology of cheese, wine and beer production, which normally utilizes microbes. Baby poop is apparently teeming with microbes, specifically Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, which are used in probiotics.

Researchers used bacteria cultured from babies' poop to create "fuet," a type of Spanish fermented pork sausage.

Fuel

Humans have been known to drink urine when they get stuck in a place without a water source, but it turns out pee can also be used to power robots. EcoBots are pollution-monitoring robots that could use pee as fuel. An artificial heart pumps urine over a microbial fuel cell within the robots, allowing them to recycle waste into electricity.

The bots' fuel cells harness living microorganisms such as those that dwell in the human gut and sewage treatment plants. Upon digesting urine, the microbes produce electrons, which in turn generate an electrical current.

"In the future, we hope the robots might be used in city environments for remote sensing," where they could help to monitor pollution," study researcher Peter Walters, an industrial designer at the University of the West of England, said via Live Science. "It could refuel from public lavatories, or urinals."

Aside from urine, EcoBots have also made use of all sorts of nasty substances as fuel source, including dead flies, wastewater, rotting produce and sludge.

Bricks

Scientists have found that urine could be used to create bricks — yes, actual bricks to build your houses with. To form urine-bricks, Suzanne Lambert and Vukheta Mukhari from the Civil Engineering Department of University of Cape Town (UCT) mixed fresh urine and lime — calcium hydroxide powder. They then strained the liquid and added sand and bacteria to it, which resulted to a cementlike substance.

The bricks made from urine don't lose to limestone when it comes to sturdiness and hardness. They set at room temperature, so they are easier to make and more sustainable as they do not require a coal- or wood-burning oven. While they do smell funky during the setting period, the urine aroma eventually goes away after 48 hours.

Cure for diseases

For at least 5,000 years, cow urine has been used as remedy for all sorts of diseases in India. Om Prakash of the Cow Protection Department for the Hindu sect Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which advocates the therapeutic effects of drinking cow urine, claimed that it could cure about "70 to 80 incurable diseases" including cancer and diabetes, according to Reuters.

Medical experts, however, are skeptical over the cancer-defeating ability of cow urine.

"I think I'm perfectly comfortable in saying that I'm aware of no data that cow's urine — or any other species' urine — holds any promise ... in treating or preventing cancer," Dr. Donald Hensrud of the Mayo Clinic told ABC News.