At last month’s Glastonbury Festival, a large (40-person) Pee Power urinal was sited at a prominent location near the main Pyramid Stage to raise awareness of this ground-breaking system (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), which is being commercialised and introduced to off-grid areas in the developing world.

The Pee Power system can turn organic matter such as urine into enough electricity to power lighting or charge mobile phones; at the same time, it sanitises the urine and produces plant fertiliser as a natural by-product.

Energy produced at the festival powered lighting in the urinal block at night, while a new feature called ‘Pee to Play’ saw festival-goers using Game Boys powered by the system.

Visitors were also able to rate their Pee Power experience via an electronic display and give feedback to academic staff who were available to explain how the technology works.

The Pee Power urinals have been a fixture at the event since 2015 and are used by thousands of people each day.

Ioannis Ieropoulos, director of the Bristol BioEnergy Centre at Bristol Robotics Laboratory (www.bristolroboticslab.com), said: “It was a great pleasure to be welcomed back to this wonderful event for a fourth year and to be part of the festival’s environmentally conscious sanitation campaign.

“There has been much recent activity with our technology, including the introduction of Pee Power to schools in Uganda and Kenya, supporting our aim to improve safety and sanitation in the world’s poorest communities.

“Our system is being refined and made more efficient, and for the first time we powered some of the applications directly, which means no batteries.”