‘Urine trouble,’ some states warn truckers

Poster strategy
Darcy Wilson had another approach after her husband complained of having to pick up trucker bombs left on the grounds of a 10-acre truck stop 30 miles east of Seattle on Interstate 90, a major truck route.

She did some research and found that the state Department of Ecology had made posters that read, "This is not a urinal." The agency was happy to send her the posters, to which she attached an updated sign about the higher state litter fine.

Wilson posted a dozen on light posts and trash cans and says her husband believes he's finding fewer jugs of urine lying around the truck stop.

"People are looking at the fine," she says.

But truckers continue dumping the heavy jugs in trash cans that still have to be emptied. "Truckers don't want to walk into a bathroom" with the jugs, Wilson says, so her husband is urging his boss to order portable bathrooms where truckers could dump the containers in private.

"We'll do anything to not have to pick up that stuff," she says.

Recycling solution?
Unfortunately, a recent breakthrough in diesel filter technology that uses urine won't be helpful.

European researchers are developing a filter that uses animal urine to cut down on harmful emissions. Truckers who use the filter will fill up with the purified urea solution each time they stop for diesel.

But Oliver Kröcher, one of the filter researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich, Switzerland, says using human urine "is not practical at all, since ... very pure urea has to be used" and that wouldn't be the case with urine straight from the source.

"Thus, there is no way to apply this crazy idea," he says.

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