Sanitation Economy Accelerator

Efficient biorefinery that cleanly processes high moisture biogenic resources while generating capital in the form of tipping fees, service contracts, thermal energy, electrical energy, water and biochar. The Biomass Controls sanitation innovation is the ability to add toilet resources to our bio-refinery and output products such as thermal energy and biochar. It is designed for communities of 500-10,000 people. The refinery is integrated into a transportable shipping container. It can reduce solids volume by over 90%. The thermal process output is a pathogen free product. The bio-refinery has a small footprint, can be operational in a few days, can run at temperatures from -40C to 30C, and processes 30,000 liters or one ton of material each day. The next version of our bio-refinery will produce electricity for off-grid operation.

The Ti Sanitation Centre is a one stop answer for all women looking for safe clean toilets, health and hygiene products. It is not only toilets on wheels but also a multipurpose resource for women. It comprises of western, India toilets, shower cubicles, taps with water saving technology, panic Button in case of emergencies, digital feedback system, and trained female attendant. The buses are also enhanced by Solar operated lights. This facility can be connected to the existing urban utilities and drain lines that lead to the Sewage Treatment plants.   The bus can serve as a community toilet on wheels, only for women,  a retail site (and potential e-commerce / delivery site) for women health and hygiene products, and has the ambition to be a mobile digital health centre for women.

GARV Toilets provide end-to-end public sanitation solutions through SMART PORTABLE TOILET CABINS,  which are made from stainless steel:

• pre-fabricated modular enclosures units which can grouted to the ground in a civil platform and be placed adjacent to each other to form a toilet block.

• self-sustainable in terms of energy-usage and waste-disposal.

• equipped with Solar Panels (with Battery Packs) which further powers the LED Lights, exhaust fans and sensors inside the toilet.

• where sewage lines are not available, the toilet cabins are equipped with Bio-Digester Tanks.

• special models for Women “Toilets For Her” are equipped with Sanitary-Pad Vending Machines and Incinerators. Disabled-Friendly toilets are designed with international guidelines, with ramps, rails and instructions guides.

• equipped with Smart Technologies (RFID and IoT sensors), like sensor based flushing systems which clean the toilet floor and lavatory pan, pre-and-post every usage.

Tiger Toilet's focus is on their core technology, the Tiger Toilet digester, which is a low maintenance and  very effective means of fecal waste treatment. They have ‘converted’ this technology to a product by developing a Tiger Toilet digester – a safe, effective and affordable sanitation solution for low-income families. As a way to reach a wider market, they also offer our proprietary, lightweight but durable superstructure but can connect the digester to any type of toilet building.

They have achieved high levels of user satisfaction with the Tiger Toilet – this has been mainly due to the top two benefits – (1) lack of smells and (2) digestion of fecal sludge.

Their vision is for a “digester in a box” where the components for the digester are made from lightweight materials, pre-assembled as far as feasible and able to readily shipped and quickly installed. Much progress has been made in this area with the first prototype design has been molded.

India-based company Saathi manufactures biodegradable and compostable sanitary pads made from banana tree fiber to provide a rash-free sustainable experience and reduce pad and plastic waste. Saathi biodegradable pads degrade within 6 months of disposal- 1200 times faster than plastic pads. Each woman purchasing Saathi pads on e-commerce saves 60 kg of pad waste over her lifetime and subsidises pads for low-income women

Joelex makes sanitation accessible and affordable for the urban poor, especially women, children and the youth in Kampala, Uganda, by building toilets, showers and waste to water treatment plants within slums and markets. Joelex has designed waste treatment plants to provide various byproducts such as domestic and drinkable water, biogas and fertiliser.

SHOBAR JONNO PANI (SJP) (« Water for All ») is the Bangladeshi social enterprise created in 2010 by Eau et Vie, to ensure the supply of running water in precarious neighborhoods, in partnership with local concessionaires. The SJP project is part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined in 2015 by the Member States of the United Nations. Access to clean water and sanitation is the theme of the sixth SDG.

Live Clean provides access to public toilet and shower facilities that are clean, safe and affordable in peri-urban areas of Lusaka, Zambia. Live Clean toilets are built from cargo containers. The waste from the toilets is pushed into water recycling Biodigestion systems that make the water reusable for showers and toilets through membrane filters. The solid waste is converted into bio-gas and fertiliser.  All lighting and water pumps are powered with solar energy.

Lootel is a smart toilet cafe providing cleanwashroom services using a Pay, Use and Redeem concept. Customers pay for the use of the toilet and redeem a voucher at the Lootel Café. Lootel is an innovative public washroom service based in Indore, India.

History: The leadership of AgriProtein has been entrenched in the sanitation to high value protein cycle for almost a decade and have invested their personal time, money and drive to pioneer the waste2feed technology platforms of the BioCycle. The business only uses the separate brand BioCycle, as opposed to the AgriProtein main business, as it is appropriate in the medium term to keep the association with human toilet resources distinguishable from the clean organic waste streams used in our core operation.

Business Model: Within the ‘municipality pays for sanitation services’ context, we generate revenue from gate fees for the toilet resources that are brought to our plant. Post the biological breakdown of these resources through the natural nutrient recovery technology of the Black Soldier Fly Larvae, a mechanical process is used to produce three safe products. The process uses mostly recycled water, and minimal fuel inputs.

Distinctiveness: Our process recovers the most possible value from toilet resources, providing an animal feed, an oil, and carbon products. The primary nutrient recovery process is biological and largely passive, where insects are given the time and environmental conditions to efficiently break down the substrate.

Challenges: Product development, off-take agreements.

History: Safi Sana was founded in 2010 with an office in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and Accra (Ghana). The founding fathers are Aqua for All, Shell, Rabobank and DHV who hired Aart van den Beukel (now MD) to set up a pilot, test commercial viability and scale up. Safi Sana has a team of 21 people, responsible for operations and design and implementation of new factories. In September 2016 we opened our first large scale commercial factory in Ashaiman, serving 40,000 people with improved sanitation, green power and compost.

Business Model: The Safi Sana factory treats toilet and solid organic waste from the slum community with a capacity of 25 tonnes daily. The waste is turned into electricity and compost and sold locally. Electricity is sold to the local energy company at guaranteed feed-in tariff (price per kWh). Compost is sold to local farmers. Additionally, we charge a competitive dump fee for intake (and treatment) of the faecal waste. Safi Sana has the intention to develop 8 new factories by 2023.

Distinctiveness: A Safi Sana factory is a utility that is designed to be financially independent. That is a game-changer since most utilities for waste (water) treatment either are 100% subsidised with public funds or, what is most common in the developing world, are operated without any serious income source and without proper maintenance. In our model we involve all players in the sanitation value chain to make sure that the there is a financial and intrinsic value driver that must guarantee long term involvement.

Challenges: To make a factory commercially viable, we need the right market conditions. Meaning, that we need sufficient and good input material (waste) and customers with sufficient demand and the willingness and ability to pay. One of our strategies is to work with bigger corporates with linkages to the local community. Through this type of partnership all parties can benefit. The TBC can help us by introducing us to these bigger corporates like Unilever, Kimberly-Clark and Tata Steel. 

History: Sanergy launched full operations in Nairobi’s Mukuru slum in 2011.

Business Model: Sanergy takes a full value chain approach to the provision of hygienic sanitation, by building a network of cartridge-based sanitation units, collecting waste safely and professionally and removing it from the community, and converting the waste into usable high-value end-products, including organic fertilizer, insect-based animal feed, and renewable energy.

Distinctiveness: Recognizing that safe sanitation is more than just access to a toilet, Sanergy works in urban slums to ensure the safe containment, collection, removal, treatment, and conversion of human waste. In addition, by proving a market for waste-derived end-products, Sanergy is developing a sustainable and scalable model for urban sanitation provision.  

Challenges: Sanergy is working with the TBC to develop off-take agreements for the sale of agricultural inputs.

History: After working globally as engineers, Sanivation’s co-founders, Andrew and Emily, became convinced of the far-reaching impacts of sanitation and how a market-based solutions can achieve scale and lasting impact. Since founding the organization in 2014, Sanivation has developed technologies and launched operations in Naivasha, Kenya and Kakuma Refugee Camp.

Business Model: In urbanizing communities, Sanivation deploys a Design-Build-Operate model for sanitation services. We install toilets in the homes of the urban poor for free and charge a small servicing fee. Then, we collect the waste and bring it to our central waste processing facility where we use our proprietary treatment technology to transform it into an in-demand fuel product, charcoal briquettes. We plan to work with municipalities to be their preferred non-sewered sanitation service provider.

Distinctiveness: With our approach, we are shifting the paradigm for sanitation in two big ways. First instead of asking how can we dispose of waste with minimal impact on communities, we are asking how can waste have the maximum positive impact on communities. Secondly, we are taking a complete 100% market-driven approach to providing sanitation services, ensuring it’s long-term sustainability and replicability. Not only will these put us on our path to be a universal on-site sanitation provider for the millions of urban residents and refugees lacking sanitation services in East Africa, but catalyze others to join this effort.

Challenges: With TBC, Sanivation is working to navigate the multinational corporation procurement process, so we can help large factories save money and procure a more sustainable fuel source, our charcoal briquettes!

Business Model: Samagra Sanitation is the first for-profit social enterprise in India that is dedicated to providing access to clean, safe, and reliable community toilet facilities for the urban slum-dwelling poor.

Distinctiveness: What makes the model innovative is the seamless bundling of other value-added services along with the toilet block:

        -  Financial services (including savings accounts)

        -  Access to digital goods (mobile phone re-charge, TV subscription services, Bill Payment Services)

        -  Access to life improving Products and Services (Assisted Ecommerce)

Samagra effectively partners with municipal agencies and leverages existing community toilet infrastructure to create a community center and a “one stop shop” for slum residents. The model has proven its ability to attract and retain users to the toilet facility, promote hygienic behavior, and still achieve profitability. 

Challenges: There are 3 key areas of need for Samagra as it goes from 15 locations to 500 by the end of 2017.  These include operational support, digital innovation and resource mobilisation points of impact

History: A social business started in the city of Kumasi in 2012, owned by the UK not-for- profit WSUP. It operates in a low- income area of Kumasi, a city of over a million people in South Ghana, where it started its present service provision with the installation of portable toilets in early 2013.

Model: Product to service model. Monthly fee for toilet servicing, including the rental of toilet unit and waste collection three times per week. Waste is disposed at the municipal treatment centre.

Distinctiveness: Households in dense urban areas without sewer network or possibility to build septic tanks are willing to pay for the service, more aspirational and economical than public toilet pay per use

Challenges: demand creation, logistics, product design, operational efficiency technologies

Investors: Unilever, DFID, the Stone Family Foundation and USAID

TBC contribution: Product design (LIXIL Corporation), malodour solutions (Firmenich), sales & marketing (Unilever)

History: Joint venture between private utility and provincial government, which decided in 2014 to explore how to replicate a portable toilet service in its concession area to reach last mile consumers - building on the success of similar model for water access to the same last mile consumers

Model: Bundling of services to the same consumers (Water & Sanitation). Model enabled by efficiencies gained with cross-subsidies between higher income consumer segment (85% of households) and last mile water service network (15% of households), charged as top up on water bills

Distinctiveness: This model would leverage the assets of a large utility to rapidly and efficiently scale up portable toilets to 300,000 families in Laguna

Challenges: Need for regulatory approval to enforce the payment of an additional environmental fee on top of water bills, technical and aspirational portable toilet design that fits Laguna’s environmental and cultural context.

Investors: Laguna Water, Lixil Corporation

TBC contribution: Product design (Manila Water, LIXIL Corporation, Unilever, Firmenich, Clean Team), consumer insights and marketing (Unilever & Kimberly-Clark), access to financing for pilot testing (TBC)

History: After the TBC had identified key technological barriers for portable toilet projects, LIXIL Corporation decided to take on the challenge of innovating in this field, and set up a Portable Toilet Innovation team. The team designed a new sanitation system for low income, densley populated living environments where conventional sanitation solutions such as pit latrines or sewers are nt an option due to space or cost.

Model: Product innovation to be sold B2B to low-income toilet service providers.

Distinctiveness: Innovative technology and new design of the toilet to improve upon acceptance barriers such as malodour, water scarcity, chemistry-friendliness for waste treatment and waste to resource opportunities.

Challenges: Acceptance of new toilet design, cost of materials, connectivity to waste treatment requirements

Investors: LIXIL Corporation. Funding to support field pilots: WSUP (via DFiD) for Ghana

TBC contribution: Co-innovation platform (TBC), cleaning solution advice/innovation (Unilever), malodor solution advice/innovation (Firmenich), field pilots opportunities (Manila Water, WSUP).

History: Sanitation business founded in 2013 as a subsidiary of eKutir, an Indian social business

Model: Svadha identifies, trains, supports local entrepreneurs that manufacture latrine components, commercialise them and ensure installation and after-sales

Distinctiveness: Svadha is the first to promote comprehensive solutions in the range of $200 including manufactured products which it sells to entrepreneurs to cover its costs

Challenges: Svadha needs to confirm demand at scale, increase entrepreneurs’ sales, maintain corporate discounts on manufactured products, and reduce marketing costs

Investors: eKutir, Unilever

TBC contribution: Unilever, Grand Challenges Canada, and Kimberly provide funding and technical assistance.

Other partnerships triggered: Firmenich and Lafarge-Holcim