On Wednesday October 31, Holy Shit’s director Rubén Abruña was invited to a presentation of a localized wastewater treatment system in the Oberes Brüggli Restaurant, located in Selzach, in the Jura mountains of Switzerland. The demonstration was conducted by Bastian Etter, co-founder of Vuna , and Rebecca Humborg, a master’s student from Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich. There were about 25 participants in attendance, members of the Rotary Club invited by Simon Wyss, from the Wyss Family, owners of the restaurant and the watch company Jowissa. Vuna is the creator of Aurin, a fertilizer derived from human urine that is free of heavy metals and medical residues and is approved by the Swiss Federal Agricultural Office to be used in commercial agriculture. The installation in Oberes Brüggli consists of a combination of vermicomposting and constructed wetlands which clean the wastewater from the entire restaurant. This means that after it is being cleaned by plants and organisms, the wastewater infiltrates or is used for irrigation, while the fecal part of the excreta is digested by worms and turned into compost. It is a localized system not connected to the sewers, which is a combination of the system adopted by the Équilibre Cooperative in Geneva and the Eco-Machine from the Omega Center for Sustainable Living, featured in the film Holy Shit. This proves, once again, there are many ways to treat our wastewater that keep the nutrient cycle intact and do not pollute the environment.
