Waste-evaporating toilet for communities with no plumbing

Among the most life-saving innovations in human history is the toilet. Prior to COVID, poor sanitation was the leading cause of disease spread. Without safely managed sanitation, there can be no hope of providing effective health services to fragile or displaced communities. Safe and sustainable sanitation underpins any healthcare infrastructure.

Half of the world’s population (4.2Bn people) live with no access to safe, clean toilets, largely because they live in places with no sewage plumbing, so, they can’t flush away their waste. This is especially true for impoverished, informal, displaced, coastal, fragile and post-disaster communities. 

In such communities, sewered sanitation will never be a feasible option (even if it was, we simply don’t have enough water to provide everyone with flush toilets, which use a half-bathtub of clean water/day to get rid of a single-person’s daily waste). 

Toilets aren’t just a matter of convenience. Safe sanitation underpins so many aspects of how people and the planet survive and thrive. Poor sanitation traps people in perpetual poverty, poor health and pollution--causing 80% of (non-COVID) infectious disease-spread and 4% of all deaths. Poor sanitation stunts children’s development through diarrheal disease and chronic malnutrition. Women and girls who lack toilets in or near their homes are forced to relieve themselves in public, exposing themselves on a daily basis to risk of sexual violence. The lack of toilets in ~50% of the world’s schools leads 20% of girls to drop out by puberty, cutting them off from future agency and opportunity. Unflushed sewage not only pollutes communities and poisons scarce water resources, but also emits ~4% of annual man-made methane emissions, contributing to climate change. 

When flushing isn’t an option, sewage-waste builds up quickly, especially in crowded communities. Yet, currently available onsite sanitation alternatives are too costly, environmentally unsustainable and/or are difficult to scale:

--container-based toilets fill up quickly and require frequent (almost-daily) removal of the collected waste (like garbage), which is messy, dangerous, EXTREMELY costly and un-scalable;

--chemical toilets use toxic chemical to treat waste and require frequent servicing; 

--composting toilets messy, extremely slow to process waste, often fail and are thus unreliable and unsafe; and 

--re-invented toilets are too complex and expensive to scale in low-resources contexts or deploy in emergency contexts. 

Clearly, if everyone is going to have access to safe sanitation, we need a more sustainable way to “flush” human waste, especially for crowded and vulnerable communities, emergency situations, fragile ecosystems and water-stressed areas, that requires no water or hookups to external power or plumbing infrastructure. 

In solving sanitation, we can elevate these communities--promoting health, dignity, gender empowerment, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity—and help mitigate and adapt to climate change with just one intervention: a smarter, lower-cost, cleaner, more-sustainable, more-accessible (drop-in) toilet. 

Any health-system serving emergency context or vulnerable communities would necessitate safe sanitation that can be deployed in challenging locations, implemented with little or no infrastructural support, operated efficiently in a decentralized manner and not consume or pollute local water-resources.

For these communities, change:WATER has developed a solution to make sanitation more accessible, affordable, deployable, safer, cleaner, scalable and sustainable--by re-imagining flushing. Our team has invented a smart, clean way to eliminate un-sewered waste fast WITHOUT flushing OR frequent collection—instead, we SHRINK it inside the toilet itself! Human waste is 95% water--instead of flushing it, we EVAPORATE it. 

We‘ve developed the iThrone, a low-cost, portable, no-flush/waterless toilet that evaporates waste at the point-of-use. The iThrone collects waste in bags made of a novel evaporative material [DEMO: bit.ly/2022evapanim]. These waste-shrinking bags soak up and evaporate the water content of daily waste, converting sewage into pure water vapor. The bags will shrink 1-3 month’s-worth of waste before they need to be replaced. 

So, not only does the iThrone NOT use or pollute water or discharge any waste, it actually turns waste back into molecular water. Thus, the iThrone eliminates 90-95% of daily waste collections onsite, in a way that is clean, sustainable, low-cost and good for the planet. By dehydrating waste quickly, the iThrone slows down the metabolic activity of fecal microbes, thereby cutting off sewage-derived methane emissions. Also, the waste-collection bags are 95-99% compostable, thus enabling options for circular waste management or waste-to-value conversion.

Unlike other toilet options, the iThrone is the ONLY toilet that literally makes waste disappear! By quickly shrinking waste at the point-of-production, the iThrone uniquely tackles the key challenge of distributed sanitation: reducing the cost and frequency of waste collection.The iThrone is truly the GREEN toilet—saving money AND the environment!

The iThrone completely transforms the economics and deployability of “off-line” sanitation. By quickly shrinking unflushed waste at the point-of-use, the iThrone cuts sewage-removal collection costs and frequencies, and cleans up communities.  Because it needs no hookups to external infrastructure, our waste-shrinking toilet is more deployable than other options and can provide a clean, compact, waterless solution for crowded, unsewered urban slums and displaced/informal communities; drop-in sanitation in emergencies; and water-saving sanitation in fragile ecosystems and drought conditions.

The iThrone makes safe sanitation MUCH more ACCESSIBLE, SCALABLE and PROFITABLE:

--It is 2-5X lower-cost to install than comparable alternatives, thereby increasing access and availability. 

--Unlike other container-based toilets, which need emptying every 1-2 days, the iThrone only needs to be emptied monthly.

--This cuts collection costs by at least 50% while increasing servicing efficiency.

--With fewer collections per toilet, waste-collectors can service up to 20x more toilets, scaling servicing capacity without expanding collection-fleets. 

Lower costs + lower servicing + increased deployability enables increased access and scalability.

Ultimately, our waterless, waste-evaporating approach to sanitation has potential to affect real systems-level transformation: getting safe, clean sanitation to more people in more places at lower cost while cleaning up communities, safeguarding precious water resources and reducing carbon emissions.

Our solution targets people living in communities and situations where centralized or safely-managed sanitation isn’t available and/or feasible, and where other distributed sanitation solutions fail. These include unsewered urban areas (eg slums); informal or displaced populations (eg IDPs/refugees, homeless); emergencies (eg extreme weather, natural disaster); fragile ecosystems (coastal areas, water-stressed regions); low-resource or indigenous communities; and/or areas where building centralized or underground water/sewerage infrastructure is infeasible (mountain communities, built-up areas). 

While our solution fundamentally does one thing (shrinking waste at the point-of-production via evaporation), stakeholders and WASH experts see that this approach actually addresses a broad number of challenges for these communities above.

• For crowded communities, our solution fits in compact spaces and, unlike most no-flush toilets, because it doesn’t smell, it can be placed close to where people live or work.
• Because it doesn’t require hookups to infrastructure, it can be deployed in impermanent communities, low-resource areas and emergency contexts.
• Because it doesn’t use water or discharge pollution and it curbs sewage-derived methane emissions, it provides a clean, green sanitation option for fragile ecosystems.
• As a decentralized solution that is easy to deploy, it helps to build resilience in fragile communities.
• Because it is a compact, self-contained system that requires no plumbing, it is installed completely above ground, and thus more deployable in challenging terrain and built-up areas. 
• By hygienically containing and eliminating waste, it cleans up communities and helps reduce disease spread. We approximate that just one of our toilets reduces exposure for people in a 0.25-0.5km radius to vector-borne disease spread (so, in high-density communities, 1 toilet potentially impacts 500-1000 people).

Our technology allows this toilet to be more broadly deployable (because it needs no supporting infrastructure) and to be much lower cost to install and service. 

So, at a systems level, our innovation enables improved access for users as well as lower costs and increased efficiency, scalability and sustainability for providers.

Our solution benefits every stakeholder along the sanitation value-chain:

• For governments/NGOs: our toilets provide a rapidly-deployable, safe, clean, low-cost drop-in solution for communities lacking sanitation.
• For sanitation installers (eg construction-contractors): our solution allows them expand installations into areas where water/sewerage infrastructure don’t pre-exist, saving massive upfront costs and growing their markets.
• For sanitation servicers: reduced waste-collection costs and frequencies enable decentralized sanitation management to be much more scalable, sustainable and profitable.
• For end-users: lower upfront and servicing costs combined with broader deployability may promote increased availability and accessibility of safe, clean toilets.
• Our solution also promotes cleaner, healthier, more resilient communities
  • Improved sanitation promotes health and reduced disease burden means communities can be more productive & prosperous. 
  • Reduced water usage and pollution
  • Reduced system-wide vulnerability with robust distributed sanitation systems
  • Children are less exposed to sanitation-related disease.
  • Women and girls have more proximal access to safe, private toilets, and thus face reduced risk of sanitation-related sexual assault.
  • Low-cost, low-maintenance, clean toilets may increase toilet-access in schools, encouraging girl-students to stay in school.
  • Potential to create new jobs and income opportunities around circular sanitation economy.

Our team has been working on this vision since 2015, bringing together 50yrs of successful technology innovation, commercialization and scale market deployment--leveraging complementary experiences from venture finance, business strategy, water-systems engineering, hardware and military equipment development, cleantech innovation and international development. Our breakthrough technologies evolve from NASA- & DOE- funded research efforts. Our founder/CEO, Dr. Diana Yousef, PhD, MBA, who initially conceived of evaporative sanitation, has 15+ yrs experience commercializing scientific/technology innovations for social impact. Previously, Diana was a serial cleantech & social entrepreneur, venture investor, McKinsey consultant, and international development innovator at UNDP & the WorldBank/IFC. She a former biochemist (BA, Harvard; PhD, Cornell), & holds an MBA & MA in International Development (Columbia). Michael Martin, MEng (CTO) spent 36yrs leading global product development teams at Xerox, taking products from concept stage to scale manufacturing to commercial market launch. He holds a MS in Systems Management and Design from MIT. Amit Gandhi, PhD Eng, leads the development of the IoT smart controls on our environmentally-responsive toilet. He is the founder of SenSen, a company that develops smart controls and remote sensor systems for the development context. He holds a BS MEng from CalTech and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. Jim Spence, MEng (Product Designer) spent 40yrs designing products for military, industrial, aerospace and automotive applications for Xerox. Ujjawal Gautam, MS Eng, is an inspired inventor and mechanical engineer who brings experience designing and developing medical devices, and who led our field deployment of our pilot units into poor, indigenous community in Panama last year. Yashik Gabbaladka, MS Eng (industrial engineering/fabrication) has experience designing and developing robust hardware products for the frugal context. Joshua Maldonado, BS Eng, has spent 10yrs designing and implementing new product innovations in low-resource communities in Latin America and Africa. He is a graduate of MIT. Andrew Ollerhead, BS Eng, is a chemical engineer who helped drive the development, testing, formulation of our proprietary waste-evaporating membrane material. Paul Martin, MCP career spans 20yrs leading sales, marketing organizations (including for Adobe and 3 successfully-exited digital marketing startups), as well as experience in urban planning and designing around distributed service deliver in India and Brazil. He holds a BA in Social Studies from Harvard and MA Urban Design & Planning (MIT). 

While our team-members are not members of the communities where we currently work, most of us come from countries where we've experienced the challenges of poor sanitation (Diana's family is from MENA; Amit, Yashik and Ujjawal are from India; Josh's family is from LATAM; and most of us have spent our careers working on product innovations targeting the development context).  Because we are addressing a global problem, we work very closely with local partners in our target countries, taking their lead and input at every step during product development and pilot implementation. As a team, we understand the critical importance of seeking guidance from local stakeholders and baking their needs into the very DNA of our product. 

Currently, we have 2 pilot units in Kiboga, Uganda and 2 pilot units in Kuna Nega, Panama. Our first pilot units in Uganda, which were essentially waste collection boxes that sat under a squat pan (ie squat toilets), were installed on the campus of the District Hospital which mainly serves female patients, and was also in proximity to the All-Girls high school. Neither of these facilities had proper toilets (they shared a rudimentary set of pit latrines). Our toilets served 300-400 people/wk with safer/improved sanitation (until it was closed down for COVID). Each iThrone serves 20-50 users/day, and also has potential to reduce vector-borne disease spread in crowded urban areas (ie ~500-1000 people in the surrounding 0.25-0.5km). The women and girls who used the toilet has universally positive feedback, as our toilets were cleaner, more pleasant, and were able to be located a 1min walk from the Hospital (as opposed to the pit latrines, which had to be located about a 5min walk up a hill to a remote area, because of the smell and poor hygiene). The toilets did not allow any waste leaks or discharge. There was no smell aside from an slight earthy odor that was only detectable if one stood with their nose right next to the exhaust vent. These units also succeeded in reducing collected waste volumes by 6-10x, supporting the claim that our toilets would only need to be emptied 1-2x/mo. 

We spent the COVID period completely overhauling our technology. Then in 2021, we were asked by a construction company in Panama to develop a fully-functional seated toilet for household installation. This was a complete re-imagining and re-design of our solution, which required us to further innovate on our evaporative membrane, design a completely new form-factor (as a seated toilet is much more complex than a waste-collection box) and develop environmentally-responsive IoT smart controls to optimize the evaporative efficiency and dynamic ventilation of our system, as well as tracking waste-collection and performance data to communicate back to the operator. These units were installed in bathrooms for two indigenous families in an informal yet rapidly-growing and environmentally fragile community outside of Panama City. These residential toilets will serve 20+ people in these two households. Should this pilot prove a success, our construction partner has the potential to secure a government contract to expand deployment of our toilets to between 50K-150K poor and indigenous households across Panama that live in coastal, island and mountain regions, as well as in health clinics, community centers and schools in these communities. 

Such a partnership could result in 4000 iThrones being deployed in 2yrs via a hardware out-licensing partnership, providing between 80K-200K users per day (and 24MM-60MM users per year) with improved sanitation, and reducing vector-borne disease exposure to 2MM-4MM people in those communities.

In 5yrs, we project such partnerships could result in 50K-150K units deployed, providing 3MM-7.5MM users per day (and 900MM-2.3Bn uses per year) with improved sanitation, and reducing vector-borne disease exposure to 75MM-150MM people in those communities.

We have also been asked to pilot 3 units of this “smart toilet” in Zambia, to provide safe, waterless public sanitation in un-sewered urban areas. Another pilot request that we are developing is with indigenous communities in Hawaii, who have only informal toilets on their lands and face extreme weather conditions. 

Additionally, our iThrones confer significant environmental benefits and help low-resource communities to be more resilient. One iThrone could conserve ~20K-130K gal/household/yr of water versus flush-toilets (which waste ~10 bathtubs-worth of clean water every day to get rid of 1 bucketful of waste). By shrinking sewage, we could conserve 9-45 MM gal gasoline/toilet/year from reduced collection/haulage. One iThrone could avoid 5-10Tg/household/yr of methane emissions from raw sewage (equivalent to driving 1500-3000mi/yr)--by rapidly dehydrating the sewage and cutting off microbial methane emissions. (About 4% of man-made methane emissions come from distributed, untreated waste, so our waste-dehydrating technology helps to fight climate change.)

Our participation in SOLVE 2019 was a game-changer for us. One of our SOLVE judges become an investor who has since provided us invaluable guidance. The funding award from Innospark came at a critical moment for us when we needed to fund our Uganda pilot deployment. SOLVE also catalyzes a powerful network effect, in that investors found us through the SOLVE platform to invest in our pre-seed raise.

Recently, a corporate pilot partnership that we needed as our next critical go-to-market validation milestone got put on hold because the corporate partner is going out of business. So, we have our new environmentally-responsive IoT smart toilet ready to be piloted but we need to identify a new pilot partner. Because we are targeting B2B channels initially, we are looking for a corporate partner who can then become a first-adopter customer in 1-2yrs--we think this will be a sanitation services company, a construction company or a company that manufactures and distributes sanitation equipment/infrastructure.

Ahead of market launch in ~2yr, we will need to build out our go-to-market capacity: business development, sales and marketing, industrial engineering and scale manufacturing capacity. 

We also want to start developing a pipeline of corporate partnerships for distribution partnerships and B2B/B2G sales; and to help us gear towards scaled manufacturing, distribution and customer engagement.

We would also like some guidance on further evolving our go-to-market plans. We could use guidance on how to develop such out-licensing and distribution partnerships with reliable and scalable partners. Our B2B customers would serve as initial distribution channels, buying toilets in bulk to install, deploy and service them. Our business model is a razor/razor-blade model, with upfront sales of our toilet hardware and recurring sales of the replacement evaporative bags. To launch lean, we plan to outsource production of our toilet hardware, and possibly even license it to various regional/market channel partners. However, to maintain high QA/QC standards, we will maintain in-house production of our evaporative bags, which will, over time, become our more significant revenue stream. We could use guidance on how to develop such out-licensing and distribution partnerships with reliable and scalable partners. We need to build up our capacity and skills around business development, sales & marketing, contracts, customer management, scaling operations, etc. Also, in 1-1.5yrs, we'll be raising our Seed/Series A round, so we would welcome introductions to investors and strategic partners

We also need some expertise and mentorship around the issue of developing virgin sanitation value chains and circular sanitation value chains in many of our first-adopter markets. (NOTE: our bags are 95% compostable--once we’ve scaled, we’ll have the resources to implement some formulation changes to render them 100% compostable).

The iThrone is the only toilet that eliminates waste leveraging pervaporation (low-energy evaporation mediated through a membrane). 

Our evaporative toilet gets rid of waste in a way that is clean, low-cost and good for the planet.

Unlike other toilet options, the iThrone is the ONLY toilet that literally makes waste disappear!

Other toilets either:

--use a bunch of water to flush it

--awful chemicals to treat it

--or frequently, costly collections to remove it

--composting toilets are slow, messy, unreliable and unsafe; and

--re-invented toilets are too complex and expensive for low-resource and crisis contexts.

Our waste-shrinking toilet can provide a clean, compact, waterless solution for crowded, unsewered urban slums/communities; drop-in sanitation in emergencies; and water-saving sanitation in drought conditions.

Basically, evaporating waste is the next best option to flushing, BUT without all that needless waste of freshwater! By quickly shrinking waste at the point-of-production, the iThrone uniquely tackles the two key challenges that no other non-flush toilet has been able to solve: (a) reducing the cost and frequency of waste collection and (b) quickly eliminating waste at the point-of-production. 

Our technology gets rid of the waste by converting it into something CLEAN—molecular water.

Our technology untethers rapid, onsite waste-removal from inflowing water and flushing infrastructure, thus making clean sanitation available to anyone anywhere. 

Shrinking waste fast at the point-of-production completely transforms the economics of “off-line” sanitation—allowing increased toilet-access and servicing-efficiency/scalability while cutting installation, collection and disposal costs. 

Our technology is hugely disruptive, enabling safe, clean, easily-deployable sanitation anywhere—increasing access while reducing costs. So, ultimately, the iThrone will get safe sanitation to more people at lower cost. Our solution will help clean up communities, conserve water and contribute to reducing the 4% of man-made methane emitted from unmanaged raw sewage.

Our solution is a SINGLE intervention that addresses 7 SDGs, delivering social & environmental impacts with respect to: poverty, health, environmental sustainability, food security, energy/water access, gender empowerment and climate action. 

By literally making waste disappear, the iThrone has potential to affect real systems-level transformation: getting safe, clean sanitation to more people in more places at lower cost. It makes safe sanitation MUCH more ACCESSIBLE, SCALABLE and PROFITABLE.

Shrinking waste fast onsite completely transforms the economics of “off-line” sanitation because it is MUCH cheaper to deploy and to service. Because it doesn’t require hookups to water or plumbing, and due to its simple operations, the iThrone is 2-5x cheaper to install than comparable toilet options, thereby increasing access and availability. 

The toilet actively shrinks waste collections on a daily basis, and the waste-evaporating bags can last 1400-4200 uses (processing ~500-1500L per bag). And the bags themselves are largely compostable, enabling potential for circular sanitation value chains. Our waste-evaporating technology can also combat climate change. Untreated, unmanaged human waste contributes 4% of man-made methane each year—by rapidly dehydrating daily waste at the point-of-production, the iThrone cuts off methane off-gassing from raw sewage. By reducing human waste volumes onsite, the iThrone reduces fuel use for waste-collections and power consumption for waste-processing. 

Our goals for 2024 include:

• Completion of two pilots (one in Panama, one in a more seasonally variable environment) to prove broad applicability across many geographies, contexts and use cases
• Via these pilots:
  • to get improved sanitation to 100+ people who didn't have access before
  • to promote cleaner sanitation in our pilot communities (as demonstrated by reduced waste discharge, reduced waste volumes)
  • to demonstrated reduced cost and servicing frequency of our solution versus alternatives
  • to demonstrate water conservation (through reduced use vs comparables, and pollution avoided)
  • to demonstrated improved safety and dignity for women and girls in our target communities with improved accessibility and closer proximity to safe, private sanitation near their homes, schools and/or work places
  • to help these communities establish safe, sustainable sewage management operations (creating local jobs, income opportunities, possibly circular sanitation systems)
  • to demonstrate potential for safe, more efficient servicing (vs comparables)
• To launch our product to the market
• Via global out-licensing partnerships
  • to have distributed 0.3MM-0.5MM+ toilets via 3-10 partnerships, generating $115MM-$160MM in revenues, and improving the lives of 18MM people
  • get improved sanitation to 2.5MM+ people who didn't have access before
  • to demonstrate cleaner sanitation in our pilot communities (as demonstrated by reduced waste discharge, reduced waste volumes)
  • to demonstrated reduced cost and servicing frequency of our solution versus alternatives
  • to demonstrate water conservation (through reduced use vs comparables, and pollution avoided)
  • to demonstrated improved safety and dignity for women and girls in our distribution markets with improved accessibility and closer proximity to safe, private sanitation near their homes, schools and/or work places
  • to help these communities establish safe, sustainable sewage management operations (creating local jobs, income opportunities, possibly circular sanitation systems)
  • to demonstrate potential for safe, more efficient servicing (vs comparables)

Our goals for 2029 include:

To have broadened applicability and reach of our toilets, serving needs in both developing and developed markets. With more sophisticated toilets, we aim to eventually displace installation of new flush-toilets, for our more- sustainable, water- and energy-conserving approach.

To have facilitated growth in the off-line sanitation sector with our cost- saving, cleaner toilets, so that more people can access safe, dignified sanitation.

To demonstrate measurable impacts in our target communities in terms of increased health and safety, with reduced diarrheal disease and developmental delays in children, reduced vector-borne disease spread, cleaner and more climate-resilient communities, and water conservation, reduced local pollution.

To increase toilet access in schools so that fewer girls have to choose between their safety and dignity and their education.

To expand applications of our platform technologies to address other needs and applications—eg off-grid water-treatment/desalination, off-grid energy generation, waste-to-value conversion, sustainable cooling, agriculture and food production and storage.

Our toilets is a very universally-adaptable solution. With this single intervention, providing safe, clean, sustainable toilets to unsewered communities, we have potential to deliver cross-cutting impact across SEVEN of 17 SDGs! Providing clean, waterless toilets increases access to safe sanitation and conserves clean water (SDG6): improve health (SDG3); clean up communities andpromoting safe and resilient cities (SDG11); empowering women and girls by reducing sanitation-related sexual violence (SDG5); increase safe, private toilet access in schools to help students (especially girls) to complete their educations (SDG4); reduces poverty in poor communities (SDG1; each $1 invested in sanitation generates $5-46 in economic benefits); reduces the accumulation of unmanaged waste which in turn can cut sewage-derived methane emissions (SDG13). [Also, ultimately, by conserving ever-diminishing water resources in water-scarce regions, can help promote geopolitical stability and peace (SDG16).]

While impacts related to some of these SDGs are harder to track and emerge over time, we can measure more direct impact metrics in the near-term: 

Related to SDG6:

PERFORMANCE: waste volumes collected/contained; evaporation volumes and rates; safety/reliability, improved hygiene; odor mitigation. 

OPERATOR ADOPTION: toilets deployments (units, sales), recurring purchases of replacement bags (units, sales).

USER ADOPTION: qualitative user feedback; number of uses, number of users. 

Related to SDG3 and SDG5:

ACCESSIBILITY: increased accessibility and proximity to safe, clean toilets (especially for women and girls)

Related to SDG6, SDG11, and indirectly to SDG13:

ENVIRONMENTAL: waste volumes averted from discharge to the environment; conserved water volumes (vs flushing reduced fuel use for waste collection (vs comparables);  reduced waste disposal volumes; reduced use of harmful chemicals.

Related to one aspect of SDG1:

NEW INCOME GENERATION accrued to the community from waste management or waste-conversion, jobs created.

Related to SDG6 in terms of feasibility of the sanitation solution: 

(a) COMPARATIVE COST: reductions in deployment/installation and servicing costs for distributed sanitation (vs comparables); reduced operational costs (from savings on water procurement, chemical inputs, waste dumping costs); 

(b) OPERATIONAL IMPROVEMENTS: reduced collection frequencies (vs comparable container-based toilets); increased capacity (and revenues) for waste collection servicers to service more distributed sanitation networks with their current fleet sizes; 

We include a discussion of longer-term, more indirect metrics to measure impact against the SDGs listed above. 

Safe sanitation is inaccessible to half the world’s population because providing and maintaining it is TOO COSTLY and TOO MUCH WORK, and in many contexts, current options aren’t even feasible. By shrinking waste onsite, the iThrone affects systems change by drastically cutting costs and increasing profitability and scalability of waste collection operations.

Our Theory of Change is that if we can simplify installation and safe servicing of toilets, we can make clean sanitation more accessible and available to more people in more places at MUCH lower cost.

We’ve developed a technology solution that lowers the cost of installing and servicing safe toilets, so they can be available and accessible to more users in more places. 

The iThrone is:

• a SAFER toilet (eliminating waste fast onsite);
• INSTALLABLE ALMOST ANYWHERE (evaporating waste instead of flushing it liberates our toilets from hookups to infrastructure; as a self-contained/stand-alone system, the iThrone does not require work-intensive installations);
• LOWER PRICE/CAPEX (due to simpler hardware vs comparable options);
• LOWER-MAINTENANCE and LOWER COST/OPEX (by reducing waste-collection frequencies).
• Fewer collections-per-toilet lowers costs
• Fewer collectors can cover more toilets, increasing servicing capacity and revenues
• Collectors benefit from safer working conditions and improved incomes
• More efficient servicing saves costs for sanitation providers (eg municipalities)
• Needing no hookups to power, plumbing or external water-sources, our toilets can be dropped-in anywhere
• Cost-savings by local municipalities to deploy our system versus alternatives
• Reduced cost and effort to install our drop-in toilets can lead to greater toilet-access (especially in difficult places)
• Increased availability of toilets increases number of users with access to improve sanitation

More scalable servicing: Shrinking daily waste onsite increases collection-efficiency, and thus enables more scalable, sustainable and profitable servicing

Our stand-alone solution simplifies deployment and increases accessibility:

Complete containment of onsite waste results in:

• Cleaner solution increases environmental safety and sustainability:
  • Reduced fuel use from waste-collection/haulage (vs alternatives);
  • Reduced volumes of open sewage or waste-discharge;
  • Reduced water-use and pollution—conserving local water resources;
  • Re-cycling of pure water from waste;
• Cleaner solution increases safety and health of communities:
  • Reduced disease-likelihood in children with access to safe, clean toilets;
  • Reduced vector-borne disease-exposure in cleaner communities;
  • 100% containment of waste and odor allows for placement in compact spaces and closer locations to where people live/work, so clean toilets can be more easily-accessible;
  • Installing toilets in closer, less-isolated areas reduces women’s/girl’s exposure to attack and sexual assault;
  • Low-cost, low-maintenance, compact, clean toilets may increase toilet-access in schools, helping girl-students to more easily pursue their educations.

Our concept for evaporative sanitation was inspired by work that our founder had done for NASA looking at ways to recycle wastewater for the Space Station. A concept that was considered was the use of breathable materials as a way to passively pull molecular water from wastewater.That sparked a thought for: While the Space Station is the ultimate off-grid location, there are plenty of off-grid locations here on earth and maybe we could Use this approach as a low-cost way, low-energy to separate water from waste.

We considered how nature itself moves molecular water—through EVAPOTRANSPIRATION by which plants transports molecular water from a wet soil to drier air, driven by the relative moisture differential between those masses.

Our technology essentially mimic the 3 elements of a plant’s transpiration system include:

--the interface that absorb water (like the roots);

--the structures that transport the water molecules from the wet mass (soil, or in our case, waste) to the evaporate interface; and 

--the evaporative surface that releases the pure molecular water to the air.

ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION of IMPACTS OF this technology innovation:

Use of an iThrone versus a flush toilet can reduce freshwater use by avoiding flushing of a 0.5-bathtub's-worth of water per person per day. Each iThrone can avoid the use and pollution of 20 tankers-full of clean water and reduce collections-related fuel-usage by 10MM+ gal per year. By quickly dehydrating daily waste, each iThrone has the potential to cut off methane emissions equivalent to driving 1500mile/yr. 

SDG 1: Poor sanitation perpetuates poverty. While this is hard to measure, global NGOs have determined that $1 invested in sanitation yield $5-$46 in improved prosperity, and poor sanitation costs $260Bn/yr in economic losses. While it is hard to measure this link on a small scale, we can eventually measure improved health outcomes in communities with cleaner sanitation, and that can translate into economic metrics such as quality-of-life, increase work days, etc. Also, when linked to gender empowerment and education outcomes from safer, more available sanitation, over time we can see reduced poverty for women, which in turn benefits their families and communities.

GOAL 03: Good Health and Well-being

In the short term, we can track increased access to cleaner, more hygienic sanitation. With a longer term study, we can start to track reduced disease exposure.

GOAL 04: Quality Education

More available and accessible toilets in schools helps to girls to attend more days of school, especially when they reach puberty. Safe, clean, private toilets in schools makes it easier for girls to attend and concentrate in school (as opposed to the extreme measures they need to take to get through a whole day of school while avoiding the urge to go to the bathroom). 50% of the world's schools lack proper, safe bathrooms, and this contributes to >20% of girls dropping out by puberty. While it is hard to directly link toilet availability in schools to education outcomes, we can eventually measure increased school attendance for students (especially for puberty-aged girls).

GOAL 05: Gender Equality

More available and accessible toilets near homes and in schools helps to empower women and girls: (1) by reducing their exposure to sanitation related sexual violence (in many poor and vulnerable communities, when females have to relieve themselves in public, this increases their risk of being sexually assaulted) ; and (2) by increasing access to safe, clean, private toilets in schools, this makes it easier for girls to attend school and stay with their education through puberty (50% of the world's schools lack proper, safe bathrooms, and this contributes to >20% of girls dropping out by puberty). While it is hard to measure sanitation-related sexual violence (which is underreported), we can measure how many females gain access to safe private toilet use in or near their homes. While it is hard to directly link toilet availability in schools to education outcomes, we can eventually measure increased school attendance for students (especially for puberty-aged girls).

GOAL 06: Clean Water and Sanitation

Providing clean, waterless toilets increases access to safe sanitation and conserves clean water. We can track how many users gain access to safely managed sanitation, as well as how much waste we capture/avert from the environment, how much waste volume we eliminate through evaporation and we can extrapolate how much flush water we conserve compared to flush toilets.

GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Providing our drop-in toilets, which were designed to specifically address need for non-sewered sanitation in crowded and urban communities, we can track increased safe sanitation access, reduced waste dumping/pollution, reduced environmental impacts of poor sanitation, reduced water usage from non-flush toilet use.

GOAL 13: Climate Action

Our rapid waste-dehydrating toilet reduces the accumulation of unmanaged waste which in turn can cut sewage-derived methane emissions (methane off-gassing from raw sewage) and reduced fuel use for waste-collections and waste-processing. While it is more complex to measure reduced methane off-gassing (since there isn't a well measured base-line to begin with, but it is a biological fact that waste converts to methane when untreated), it is easier to measure the comparative reduced frequency of waste removal (thus reduced fuel use for collections) and reduced waste volumes (that in turn reduces energy use for waste processing). Wastewater treatment consumes 2-3% of global energy.

Our solution delivers a multiplier effect in terms of positive impact on the full spectrum of stakeholders:

• Servicers/Collectors: our solution is an enabling tool that transforms their collection-economics and operations, so that they can be more profitable and scalable. The UN GLAAS Report cites the lack of sufficient human-resources to service increasing volumes of off-line sanitation. By shrinking those volumes, and allowing waste-collection to be safer, cleaner and more lucrative, our solution can alleviate those constraints, and promoted increased scalability of servicing, so fewer people can service more  toilets, to make safe, clean sanitation more widely available.
• Municipalities: our solution would contribute to solving an intractable costly problem of the economic and public health costs of poor urban sanitation, while also providing an unprecedent drop-in alternative to costly, lengthy sanitation infrastructure buildouts.
• End-users: our solution would improve access to and cleanliness of sanitation and improve dignity, health and safety for end-users and their families (especially women and girls, whose prosperity tends to benefit their wider communities). Also, by aggressively shrinking onsite waste volumes to shut down odors and prevent any discharge, the iThrone provides clean, no-odor sanitation for confined spaces, so toilets can be located closer to the users that need them. 
• Surrounding communities: our waterless, zero-discharge approach reduces strain on local water resources, pollution discharge, and the likelihood of vector-borne disease spread to neighbors living within a 0.25-0.5km radius (due to reduced access for flies, rodents, etc to open sewage). 

After years of formulating and testing our evaporative material, we tested it in a field pilot in Uganda, where we deploy essentially waste-evaporating collection boxes that capture waste from squat toilets and evaporated them. These boxes were able to process 400 uses/week of urine and fecal waste, and shrink those volumes down by 6-10x (as was confirmed by the load sensors we installed in the boxes to collect the weight data over time). Also, the waste-collection bags kept the waste 100% contained, with the only discharge from the boxes being evaporated water. We also succeeded in demonstrating the following: users had universally positive feedback about the safety, cleanliness, convenience and privacy of our toilets (vs their usual alternatives); the 6-10x volume reduction onsite enabled the toilets to run for 2-4wks before emptying (vs daily emptying of most container toilets); because they completely hygienically contained all waste and didn't develop any odor onsite, they can be located proximally to where people live and work (indicating that they could serve as a safer, more easily accessible toilet option for women and girls who need to leave home to relieve themselves).

This video shows a timelapse demo of our technology: bit.ly/2022evapanim. 

This moisture diffusion is a phenomenon that is leveraged by a lot of familiar products: 

--Tyvek Housing wrap which modulates moisture for buildings; and 

--Dri-Fit sweat-wicking sportwear that keeps us dry during a workout.

And we've apparently tapped into a HUGE unmet need across many geographies and sectors--with NO outbound marketing efforts, we've already attracted LOIs worth $2MM in sales, plus 5 paid pilots from B2B customers in Asia and LATAM to adapt our technology to a construction, transportation, maritime, residential, humanitarian and portapotty applications. Our solution is poised for rapid market uptake, and as a social venture, we see a path to large scale profitability completely aligned with scalable social and environmental impact.

Our founding and leadership team consists of 3 first-generation Americans: two Egyptian- American women and an LBGTQ Latino man. We three organically understand the struggle for underrepresented minorities to be considered and to earn a chance at opportunity. We are absolutely committed to building a company that reflects our values around inclusion and diversity, and to help spread opportunity to groups that have been shut out or left behind. CEO Diana Yousef was driven to launch change:WATER as a result of becoming a mother and finding herself pushed aside professionally. Gender-opportunity became her driving force to prove to her young daughters that women and girls don’t need to ask permission to thrive and strive in this world, but instead they can chart their own paths. So, even on the days when Diana really struggled to keep going with this venture, her mission to prove to her 3 girls that mothers and women can have self-determined and ambitious careers kept her going during the difficult times. She also wants to foster a work environment that welcomes women and minorities. The majority of our team is in fact BIPOC (Asian and Hispanic/Latinx). So, as a company, we put a focus on gender diversity at all levels of our company. Also, part of cWL’s core mission is to empower women, girls and vulnerable groups by improving their dignity, safety, healthy, access to opportunity and education, and chances at prosperity—by giving them a clean, safe solution for their daily struggle with sanitation access.

Globally, the public and private sector spend $18Bn/yr on portable toilets to try to fill the enormous sanitation-access gap. We will target this market, selling our hardware+consumables (toilets + monthly replacements of the evaporative pouches) to existing providers of sanitation services and infrastructure. Our razor/razor-blade revenue model means the growing install-base of our toilets will continue to generate recurring revenues from sales of replacements. Our distribution model will resemble Intel, wherein we will have our customers out-license, manufacture and distribute our toilet designs/hardware, while we maintain production and distribution of the recurring replacement bags. 

Initially, we will sell B2B to BUSINESSES along the sanitation value-chain: (a) INSTALLERS (eg construction contractors and equipment integrators, who install sanitation hardware into constructions, pre-fab builds and equipment such as transportation) who need lower CAPEX options than current options that require costly build-outs of surrounding/supporting infrastructure; and (b) SERVICERS (eg sewage-waste collectors, port-a-potty companies) who distribute and/or service portable sanitation, and who need MUCH LOWER OPEX/maintenance toilets to reduce collection costs and frequencies (as well as waste-dumping costs), so their businesses can be more profitable (bigger margins, scaled servicing coverage and thus increased revenues). Our B2B customers would serve as initial distribution channels. In future, we’ll plan to sell directly to large FUNDERS (government/NGO-buyers, who are all large procurers of sanitation hardware).

Our original plan was to manufacture and distribute the toilet hardware ourselves. However, because our first customers all have established manufacturing & engineering capacity, they can produce & deploy the bulkier toilet hardware into their existing channels/regions, we can pursue an out-licensing model for the toilet hardware, while we focus on producing & distributing the “smarter”, easier-to-distribute evaporative bags (really the "brains" of our solution and the recurring-revenue component). Ultimately, this is a leaner, faster global growth strategy for us—significantly reducing our costs & allowing us to quickly gain scale across markets, geographies & sectors.

Our B2B customers would serve as initial distribution channels. To launch lean, we will outsource/out-license production of our toilet-hardware to CMOs, wholesalers and/or distributors, while maintaining production of the “smart” components—evaporative membrane and bio-battery media--in- house to ensure high quality standards.

Already, with no out-bound marketing, we have significant in-bound interest, including 3 LOIs for 6000 units and a purchase order from the Turkish Government. Plus we have new interest from 5-6 customers offering paid pilots to adapt our technology to new applications and geographies. One of those engagements, for residential toilets in low-income/indigenous homes in Panama, has potential for 150K units in follow-on sales. This unsolicited interest demonstrates significant pent-up demand for our disruptive solution.

While our toilets are much lower cost than comparable options, we can command a healthy margin on both the toilet sales and the recurring replacements of the bags. Assuming a price on our toilets which is 2-5x lower than what our customers say they pay for comparables, our toilets capture a 50% margin. The replacement pouches will then generate margins of $20-300/toilet/year (depending on sizing, frequency of replacement, and pricing sensitivity of the customer)--on average, we project a 70% margin. With NO outbound marketing efforts on our part, we've already received inbound interest from 4-5 customers around the globe (demonstrating strong pent-up demand) who represent sales potential of 150K+ units--including our Panama partner who could deliver orders of 50K-150K in the next 3-5yr post pilot validation, powered by a large government contract to expand household toilets to poor and indigenous households across the country. These customers have the ability to manufacture our toilet designs and distribute them in their geographies, which allows us to grow our global footprint very fast at low cost to us. So, similar to how a microchip can we see the potential of our platform technology to quickly gain scale in many market geographies and sectors. We will launch our toilets to the market in the next 12-18mo.

Current partnership could result in 4000 iThrones being deployed in 2yrs via a hardware out-licensing partnership, providing between 80K-200K users per day (and 24MM-60MM users per year) with improved sanitation, and reducing vector-borne disease exposure to 2MM-4MM people in those communities.

In 5yrs, we project such partnerships could result in 50K-150K units deployed,  generating revenues off $115M-150MM, providing 3MM-7.5MM users per day (and 900MM-2.3Bn uses per year) with improved sanitation, and reducing vector-borne disease exposure to 75MM-150MM people in those communities. 

Our customer-paid pilot in Panama, if successful, would very likely convert to significant sales (potentially 50K-150K in unit orders over 3-5yrs), as our partner there, a large construction company, has been wanting our solution since 2016, as our solution would enable them to significantly grow their business and differentiate themselves in their market). Our solution also is significantly lower cost than their current alternatives. They also would be very willing to engage in the out-licensing model, manufacturing and distributing the toilets locally (with a royalty to us) and purchasing the replacement bags from us.

We have offers of customer-paid pilot from 4-5 other B2B entities to adapt our solution to their applications. In each case, our solution solves a problem that they can't solve with any other available solution. 

We’ve already pre-sold a pilot project to the Turkish Government (with funding from the Gates Foundation) for $50K. We've also pre-sold a pilot project to AB InBev for installations in Zambia. 

During COVID, we raised a pre-seed round of $1.5MM from angel investors (including PAX Angels, MistleToe Impact Fund, Next Wave Impact, and Toilet for All Fund).

Prior to that, we funded our work from paper concept to deployed pilot on $650K in non- dilutive grants and awards, including a $200K grant from the Humanitarian Grand Challenges Award (we were selected as a solution to address the challenges of displaced populations in emergencies and crisis situations) and other various awards, prizes, grants (Cartier Women's Award Initiative, Innospark Ventures, MIT SOLVE Award, Chivas Venture Competition Award, MIT 100K Award, Cleantech Open Award, Columbia Tamer Social Impact Fund, MIT Water Prize, MIT Pan-Arab Innovate For Refugees Competition Award, Harvard Arab Pitch Competition Award, MIT Ideas Global Challenge Award, Massachusetts Clean Energy Council, US Government Small Business Administration Grants, and Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation).