Toilet Accelerator announces its 2019 Cohort Plus New Smart & Circular Sanitation Economy Findings

MEDIA RELEASE

The 2019 Toilet Accelerator Cohort of Sanitation Economy businesses announced!

• The six businesses selected for the accelerator programme this will receive 12 months of support from mentor companies including Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, LIXIL Corporation, Firmenich and Veolia. The 2019 cohort is made up of ventures from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Uganda and Zambia.

New evidence for the Sanitation Economy published by the Toilet Board Coalition and partners

• Smart Sanitation City: The Sanitation Economy at City Scale, which outlines how sanitation gets smart – opportunities to scale up digitally enabled sanitation – with a case study from Pune, India.
• The Sanitation Economy in Agriculture, which presents the business case for revolutionising sanitation provision in agricultural sectors, via circular sanitation approaches – includes case study from the tea sector in Assam, India.

The Toilet Board Coalition (TBC), the world’s first business-led platform focused on business solutions to address the global sanitation crisis, has announced its 2019 cohort of innovative sanitation economy businesses to enter its Toilet Accelerator.

Partnering with Toilet Board Coalition member companies including Veolia, Unilever, Kimberly Clark, LIXIL and Firmenich – who will mentor the 2019 Toilet Accelerator Cohort – these companies have been selected from a competitive process to receive 12 months of business support focused on sustainable growth for business solutions addressing the global sanitation crisis.

The Toilet Accelerator programme fosters business-to-business partnerships and access to investment for companies with a joint vision to accelerate the Sanitation Economy.

The 2019 Toilet Accelerator Sanitation Economy Businesses & Multinational Corporate Mentors

The six start-ups joining the accelerator are: ATEC, Live Clean, Shobar Jonno Pani (SJP) – an Eau & Vie company, Saathi, Lootel, and Joelex.

• ATEC (Cambodia) produces, sells and distributes small-scale prefabricated biodigesters turning kitchen, farm and human waste into biogas for rural farming households across Cambodia. The ATEC Biodigester is designed to withstand the challenging conditions of flooding, high groundwater and earthquakes that developing countries often face. Corporate Mentor Lead: Veolia

• Live Clean (Zambia) 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 biogas and fertiliser. All lighting and water pumps are powered with solar energy. Corporate Mentor Lead: Unilever; Supporting Mentor: Kimberly-Clark

• Shobar Jonno Pani (SJP) – an Eau & Vie company (Bangladesh) builds secured running water networks and develops innovative, sustainable communal toilet blocks each serving 3 families, in the slums of Bhashantek (Dhaka), Bangladesh. Biofil has developed and manufactures the innovative toilets and showers used in the Eau et Vie communal toilet blocks in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Corporate Mentor Lead: Unilever

• Saathi (India), an Indian enterprise, 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 saves 60 kg of pad waste over her lifetime and subsidises pads for low-income women, of whom many have little to no access to menstrual health management products. Corporate Mentor Lead: Kimberly-Clark

• Lootel (India) is a smart toilet cafe providing clean washroom 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. Corporate Mentor Lead: LIXIL

• Joelex (Uganda) makes sanitation accessible and affordable for the urban poor, especially women, children and 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. Corporate Mentor Lead: Firmenich; Supporting Mentor: Water for People

Claire Balbo, Accelerator and Pipeline Manager at the Toilet Board Coalition said:

“The 2019 cohort of entrepreneurs entering the accelerator illustrates the progress that has been made in making the Sanitation Economy a reality. The Toilet Accelerator allows us to combine the technical expertise of our sanipreneurs with the market experience and commercial know-how of our mentor organisations. We’re delighted to be able to contribute to their growth and success.”

Lisa Hawkes, Sustainable Behaviour Change Manager for Unilever Transform and Toilet Accelerator mentor said:

“Sanitation encompasses a number of different challenges: infrastructure, behavioural change, and challenges to develop commercially viable models so businesses can operate and scale up sustainably. This is an underdeveloped space for social enterprises, so the creativity and commitment of the entrepreneurs working with the Toilet Accelerator is particularly inspiring.”

New Evidence for the Sanitation Economy – at city scale and at sector level

In 2018 the Toilet Board Coalition has taken its Sanitation Economy vision into action to demonstrate its benefits at city scale and at sector level via two landmark projects:  Smart Sanitation City, and Circular Sanitation in the Tea Sector.

Both studies have produced exciting findings for the commercial viability and business case to bring smart sanitation approaches to cities and circular sanitation approaches to rural agricultural plantations respectively.

Two new reports outlining the findings have been launched:

• Smart Sanitation City: The Sanitation Economy at City Scale

A Smart Sanitation City expands the scope of a Smart City to include its sanitation systems. Sanitation can be included in Smart Cities’ architecture through data monitoring of public and community toilet usage, sewage treatment operations, infectious disease circulation and other health indicators.

It is the vision of the Smart Sanitation City that enhanced data collection will enable more efficient decision-making that will lead to cost savings for the city and revenue generating opportunities in partnership with the private sector.

• The Sanitation Economy in Agriculture

Sanitation systems have material impact on agriculture. On the soil, on the water, and on the people who work and live on plantations. The risks of poorly managed sanitation in agricultural businesses are escalating and can no longer be ignored.

Circular sanitation systems have the potential to unlock significant economic social and environmental benefits for agricultural plantations and their local communities.

Please download from our website.

New Toilet Board Coalition Project members

The Toilet Board Coalition is delighted to welcome new members to its growing list of partners.

• Taylors of Harrogate – have joined the Toilet Board Coalition as Project Members working on the Sanitation Economy in Agriculture project. Taylors own major tea brands and also retail outlets in the UK,  and are members of the Ethical Tea Partnership.

• The Toilet Board Coalition also welcome the new partnership with the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP), which has been the foundation for the Sanitation in Agriculture project, launching its initial report on Tuesday 20th November. The ETP is a not-for-profit organisation with a membership of almost 50 international tea companies and retailers. The ETP convenes industry, development agencies, governmental, and non-governmental organisations to improve the lives of communities within the tea sector.

• European Space Agency – The Toilet Board Coalition has been working together with the European Space Agency’s Business Applications unit on Smart Sanitation applications and is pleased to announce the close of a first tender:  Space for Sanitation.  Recipients of the award to companies will enter into a feasibility phase with the Toilet Board Coalition in 2019 and will be announced in December.

Cheryl Hicks, Executive Director and CEO of the Toilet Board Coalition, said:

“The ultimate aim of the Toilet Board Coalition is to bring business solutions to one of the world’s most urgent crises. And in doing so, establishing an economy where the provision of sanitation services transforms from an unaffordable public cost, to an untapped business opportunity.”

“We are so excited to see this rapid shift in the business community, taking bold actions to accelerate the Sanitation Economy.”

2.3 billion people currently live without access to a safe toilet. The social and public health consequences of this sanitation crisis are catastrophic, but less understood are the business opportunities that addressing this challenge presents.

The Toilet Board Coalition is building the Sanitation Economy – a robust marketplace of products and services, renewable resource flows, data and information that could transform future cities, communities, and businesses. The sanitation economy is smart, sustainable, innovative, cost saving and revenue generating.

About the Toilet Board Coalition

The TBC, founded in 2014, is a global business platform enabling private sector engagement, connecting large and small companies, and amplifying business opportunities across the emergent sanitation sector; smart, sustainable business solutions to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6, ’Sanitation for all’.

“We believe that the business opportunities of the decade lie within the Sanitation Economy; there is a fortune in our toilets!” says the TBC’s Executive Director, Cheryl Hicks. “Future sanitation systems hold the promise of a robust marketplace of solutions for sectors beyond toilets and waste management, like agriculture, food, water, energy, health and more.”

In 2016 the TBC launched the Toilet Accelerator program to support entrepreneurs in low-income markets to scale commercially sustainable sanitation business models. Its inquiries into Sanitation in the Circular Economy and the Digitisation of Sanitation have led to new evidence and insights into Circular Sanitation Economy business models and pilot projects to demonstrate the 1st Smart Sanitation City — see 2017 reports, The Sanitation Economy in India and The Circular Sanitation Economy: New Pathways to Commercial and Societal Benefits Faster at Scale. www.toiletboard.org/knowledgecentre

The Toilet Board Coalition members include: Agence Française de Développement; Asian Development Bank; Brac; BORDA, Confederation of India Industry; Firmenich; Kimberly-Clark; LIXIL Corporation; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Population Services International (PSI); TATA TRUSTS; UKAID; UNICEF; Unilever; U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); WaterAid; Water Research Commission (WRC); Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC); Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP); the World Bank, water.org, Water For People

For Toilet Board Coalition inquiries, please contact:

Alexandra Knezovich at the Toilet Board Coalition: knezovich@toiletboard.org

For media inquiries, please contact:

Joshua Eyre or Henry Kirby at MullenLowe salt: toiletboardcoalition@mullenlowesalt.com / +44 (0) 208 870 6777