By Ellen Spitaleri
For years Pat Lando and Pete Muñoz had a goal: provide nutrient-rich fertilizer to local home gardeners and small growers in a sustainable way. They knew it would take the right project to make that happen. That project arrived when Muñoz’s firm, Biohabitats, was hired to design “high performance water infrastructure” for the PAE Living Building in Portland’s historic Skidmore/Old Town district.
Muñoz is an engineer specializing in high-performance sustainable buildings. Lando is a landscape architect whose work spans green roofs, living walls and sustainability consulting. Both had talked for decades about creating a circulator economy by capturing and reusing nutrients from wastewater, and the PAE building was finally “an appropriate building to do this,” Muñoz said. They decided to form a company to get the plan off the ground.
That company, Nutrient Recovery Services (NRS), produces retail-grade fertilizer by recovering nitrogen and phosphorus from urine collected inside the PAE Living Building. The system runs entirely on solar energy and rainwater and captures up to 98 percent of the key nutrients plants need to grow.
“We can’t compete on a global scale,” Lando said, noting that similar products sold in garden centers are made elsewhere and shipped to the metro area using fossil-fueled vehicles. “Our product isn’t unique in nutrient content, but other products at a garden center are made through an industrial process that uses a lot of energy,” Muñoz added.
NRS’s process begins with an ultra-pure distillation system developed with a collaborative team of engineers. Ammonia vapor is condensed as ammonium bicarbonate, producing a clear, ready-to-use agricultural amendment containing approximately five percent ammonium-nitrate. Magnesium (Epsom salt) is added to remaining liquid, which precipitates out phosphorus as a slurry known as struvite. Once collected and dried, struvite becomes a highly effective slow-release fertilizer.
NRS currently offers three products: Plant Food 1-0-0, Fertilizer 5-0-0 and Struvite Fertilizer 4-27-2. The numbers indicate the percentage of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium in each product. The struvite blend is a slow-release formula that supports vegetative growth for up to six months.
Lando and Muñoz are proud that the PAE Living Building is the first office building in the world to manufacture carbon-neutral fertilizer products from waste onsite. A “living building” achieves full Living Building Challenge certification, meaning it is net-zero energy, net-zero water and net-zero carbon. The PAE building meets all of its energy needs through onsite and offsite solar arrays and all of its water needs through rainwater capture and treatment. Its water system operates on four principles: rainwater collected for drinking, treated wastewater used for toilet flushing and irrigation, a composting toilet system for human waste and nutrient recovery from urine. Free monthly tours of the building, at 151 SW 1st Ave., are available.
Looking ahead, both men see the PAE building as proof of concept rather than a ceiling. Airports, stadiums and large music venues all have high-volume restroom facilities that could feed much larger nutrient recovery systems. “We understand the importance of being an integral part of the sustainable community,” Muñoz said. The company also donates products to the BIPOC farming community, including Black Future Farms, which grows food for a local food bank and teaches community members how to grow their own.
That donation reflects the broader model that Lando and Muñoz want to support, a supportive circular nutrient economy. Waste generated inside a building is captured, processed into fertilizer and returned to local soil to grow food. But the circle is bigger than nutrients. When customers buy locally produced fertilizer instead of a product shipped from 2,000 miles away, the money they spend stays in the Portland economy. It pays local wages, supports local suppliers and gets spent again at local businesses. A small donation of fertilizer to a BIPOC farmer amplifies in the same way: it grows food that feeds families, builds agricultural knowledge in the community and strengthens the local food system without a dollar leaving the neighborhood. The nutrients, the energy, the water and the economic benefit all stay close to home, “so everyone wins,” Muñoz said.
Customers in SE Portland can order products online and receive delivery by bicycle. Learn more about their products or book a tour for the PAE building at nutrientrecoveryservices.com.
Pete Muñoz and Pat Lando, co-founders of Nutrient Recovery Services, show off two of their locally made products, Plant Food 1-0-0 and Fertilizer 5-0-0. Photo by Nutrient Recovery Services.
