A tongue-in-cheek Liquid Death and Garage Beer marketing campaign fronted by former NFL star Jason Kelce jokingly urges people to donate urine to cool AI data centres, which consume vast quantities of water to stop servers overheating. While the campaign is a comedic stunt, water industry experts told TechCrunch that it inadvertently points to a genuine practice: data centres already use recycled wastewater, which naturally contains human urine, as an alternative to potable water for cooling.

Experts stressed that raw urine could not simply be poured into cooling systems, as it contains salts, urea, bacteria and organic matter that would clog equipment and require constant cleaning, particularly in evaporative cooling systems. Instead, treatment facilities use processes such as membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light to purify wastewater and sewage to industrial or even drinking-water standards, a practice that has been used across various industries for decades, according to Dr Greta Zornes of CDM Smith.