The ReGen Toilet Manifesto
“Modern” sanitation is flawed, and it’s time to get our $hit together.
Many people and organizations have made progress creating alternative toilet solutions that conserve resources, with the best of them being in the compost toilet industry. We are grateful to everyone who has contributed to innovation with composting toilets.
Shout outs in particular go to Clivus Multrum, SunMar, C-Head, Separett, Nature’s Head, Airhead, OGO, Laveo, Cuddy, HomeBiogas and the godfather of humanure composting Joe Jenkins, author of Humanure Handbook. Additional hat tip to the Gates Foundation for its Reinventing the Toilet Challenge in 2011, which sparked new innovation in several directions. We are also grateful to the countless community organizations and NGOs across the world who are focused on innovation in sanitation.
The efforts made by these companies and organizations enabled people to live off-grid, have better travelling lifestyles, and have access to hygienic sanitation without independence on septic systems and sewers.
The niche markets for composting toilets are growing, but the expansive need for resource-conserving toilets has yet to be filled at the household mainstream level.
Significant research and development has been done on a wide range of alternatives to conventional sanitation, especially in the last 20 years, including urine-derived fertilizers and high value contaminant-free commercial humanure compost. Companies like Evergrow, Sanitation360, PeeCycling and Wasted have shown that human biowaste can be economically recycled into value. And the Rich Earth Institute in Vermont has proven that human urine can be a valuable fertilizer to farms.
At the same time, the cost of conventional sanitation in the developed world, and the lack of infrastructure in the developing world, has created huge costs on society in general.
The USA spends more than $100 billion per year running sewage treatment plants and has a $500 billion new infrastructure funding shortfall forecast for the next 10 years with $1.2 trillion in capex needed over the next 20 years and more than $300 billion in current municipal debt related to sewage treatment systems.
The Nitrogen in urine that is flushed down toilets in the USA every year is worth more than $2.7 billion, based on an average of 11g of Nitrogen in each person’s urine per day and 2026 urea fertilizer selling at up to $0.90 per pound.
The topic of composting toilets is no longer just about RVs, boats and off-grid cabins; it’s about the economic and environmental foundations of our civilization.
And while we applaud everyone who has created and inspired alternative toilet solutions, we believe it’s time to define a new category of toilets.
It’s time for ReGen Toilets.
Toilets that work well in any restroom, in any home or business, with any usage volume, and anywhere in the world with or without infrastructure. This is way beyond niche categories like RVs, off grid cabins and boats.
It’s time for ReGen toilets that actually solve the problem of human biowaste treatment while keeping the familiarity and cleanliness of traditional toilets.
Composting toilets that work “good enough” for a week-long RV trip or an off grid hunting camp are no longer good enough. Composting toilets that are awkward, smelly and hard to clean are not good enough. Composting toilets that don’t enable you to actually use the fertilizer value of your biowaste are not good enough. An alternative toilet that creates a steady stream of bagged trash for the landfill or uses energy to burn the fertilizer value into smoke is not good enough.
It’s time to elevate the compost toilet user experience way beyond “good enough.”
It’s time for a fresh approach to toilet design at a holistic system-wide level.
It’s time for humanity to stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year to waste billions of dollars in natural resources that could be recovered.
It’s time to see the toilet as a regenerative resource recovery receptacle, not a waste disposal system.
It’s time to reinvent the composting toilet into an inviting dignified experience for every type of restroom.
We know this can be done, and we know it can be done with better economics than conventional sanitation.
We are building on the foundations laid before us by other sanitation innovators, and we sincerely thank these pioneers of alternative toilets with the impact they’ve had.
We invite collaboration with other compost toilet innovators, and with anyone whose values align. We don’t see other compost toilet manufacturers as our competition. Our competition is conventional sanitation systems that waste billions of gallons of water to flush millions of dollars worth of fertilizer into the world’s waterways on a daily basis.
All in all, this is Virro’s mission. Reinventing the toilet.
In gratitude,
Kevin Bartchlett and Gaelan Brown
Co-Founders of Virro