Can We Really Cool AI Data Centers With Pee? The Joke Ad With a Real Point
August 21, 2026
Based on reporting by TechCrunch → — simplified & explained by VAIIYA.
The joke that started it
A drink brand teamed up with a former NFL player for a funny ad suggesting people should donate their pee to help cool down AI data centers, since those centers are known to use huge amounts of water. It was meant as an over-the-top joke, complete with people singing about it — but it went viral because it touches a real, growing worry: AI is thirsty, and people are noticing.
Why raw urine wouldn't actually work
If you tried pouring actual urine into a cooling system, you'd have a mess on your hands. Urine contains salt, urea, and other stuff that would clog up machinery and leave behind gross mineral buildup very quickly. So no, data centers are not directly using raw pee.
But recycled wastewater? That's real
Here's the twist: treated wastewater — the kind that starts as sewage, including urine, but then goes through serious cleaning — is genuinely used to cool data centers today. Modern treatment plants use filters, a process called reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light to turn dirty water into something clean enough for industrial cooling. Companies in this field say they've been doing this for entire industries, not just tech, for decades.
One real example: in a part of Virginia packed with over 250 data centers, roughly 43% of all the water used for cooling in 2025 was recycled wastewater rather than fresh drinking water. That's a meaningful dent, even though more than half still came from regular drinking-water supplies.
The catch
Not every data center can just switch to recycled water — you need to be physically close to a treatment plant big enough to handle the volume, and many are being built in rural areas that don't have that kind of infrastructure nearby. Because of this, some tech companies have started directly paying to build or upgrade local wastewater treatment plants themselves, since it benefits both the surrounding community and their own data centers.
The bigger backdrop
This whole conversation is landing at a moment when a large majority of Americans say they don't want a data center built near them, largely over concerns about water and electricity use. The joke ad worked precisely because it poked at something people are already anxious about.