The study tries to find out if a special kind of toilets, named "urine diversion toilets" can stop the loss of potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen that can be used as fertilizers.

“It’s the perfect liquid gold and currently we just flush it down the toilet,” associate professor Cara Beal, of Griffith University’s Cities Research Institute, said for "The Guardian"

The problem is that urine can be a sustainable way of fertilizing plants, but it can contain pathogens, hormones and antibiotics that need processing.

“But the good stuff is the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that plants love. The technology is important, but that’s not the barrier to closing that nutrient loop and reusing our most precious resource we generate,” Beal said.

The study will investigate different toilet designs to incorporate new filtration technology developed by specialists from the University of Melbourne.

The trial is part of an initiative named Nutrients in a Circular Economy and is supported by the Australian government. It will look at the health risks from using human urine and how can it be produced in a cheap manner as a fertilizer.