A satirical campaign by Liquid Death and Garage Beer, featuring Jason Kelce, proposed cooling artificial intelligence data centers with human urine instead of drinking water. Although the idea was presented as a joke, it touched on a real problem: data centers require huge amounts of water to prevent servers from overheating, while pressure on potable water sources is increasing.
The irony is that the industry already uses a source related to the idea, but only after treating it through specialized systems. Wastewater contains urine along with salts, urea, bacteria, and organic matter, and treatment plants can convert it into water suitable for industrial use, including cooling data centers.
The Joke Is Not a Viable Cooling Method
Michael Obradovitch, vice president of global data center accounts at Ecolab, said alternative water sources are already being used to reduce reliance on drinking water. But Bruno Pigott, executive director of the WateReuse Association and formerly acting assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, explained that the goal is not to collect urine and use it directly, but to clean it and turn it into useful water.
Using raw urine in a cooling tower would create major operational problems. Salts, urea, bacteria, and organic matter could leave mineral deposits, requiring continuous cleaning. The problem is greater in evaporative cooling systems, which pass hot air over water to remove heat through evaporation; introducing urine directly would complicate treatment and could result in unwanted odors and waste.
Technologies exist that can convert urine into potable water, as happens in spacecraft, where astronauts cannot carry unlimited quantities of water. But applying this process at the scale of data centers is not the practical option being proposed. Instead, toilet water enters sewer networks and is then treated at facilities that use technologies such as membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light, along with other processes.
Recycled Water Eases Pressure, but Requires an Entire Network
Recycled water has been used to cool various industries for decades, but growing demand from data centers has made this use more prominent. Greta Zornes, water reuse practice leader at engineering firm CDM Smith, says an increasing share of her work is now focused on recycled-water projects for data centers.
The practical benefit is clear: the more data centers rely on treated wastewater, the less they need local drinking-water supplies. However, this option is not available at every site. A facility must be relatively close to a large treatment plant capable of supplying millions of gallons per day, a condition that may not be met when data centers are built in rural areas that lack treatment plants of the required size.
The Loudoun Example Reveals the Size of the Gap
Loudoun County in Virginia has more than 250 data centers, with plans to build at least 24 additional facilities. In 2025, data centers there collectively used about 200 million gallons of recycled water per day. Nevertheless, this amount represented only 43% of the county's daily data-center water consumption.
The remaining 57%, or approximately 260 million gallons per day, came from drinking-water supplies, according to Loudoun Water. These figures show that water reuse can reduce the burden, but it does not eliminate the need to expand infrastructure or address data centers' reliance on potable water.
What Changes in Practice for Data Center Operators?
The solution is not to search for an unusual water source, but to plan the data center's location early and connect it to available wastewater-treatment capacity. Obradovitch believes data centers could become a funding source or an “anchor” for water-infrastructure projects, as companies could commit to financing municipal projects near their facilities. The article said Meta will invest at least $270 million in wastewater-infrastructure projects near its data centers.
At the legislative level, Pigott calls for a 30% tax credit to help industries expand recycled-water infrastructure. He believes this support could accelerate the entry of data centers and other industries into this field.
The campaign also reveals a change in the nature of the public debate. Data centers' water footprint has become part of the controversy over the expansion of artificial intelligence, at a time when a recent Gallup poll showed that about seven in 10 Americans oppose building data centers in their communities. Thus, even a crude joke can serve a useful function if it prompts the public to understand that wastewater treatment and reuse already exist, and that the fundamental challenge is expanding the infrastructure needed to apply them at scale.