 Written by: Virginia Gardiner - CEO Loowatt Loowatt is flush with happiness to be the only sanitation solution featured amongst 70 contemporary projects in the highly anticipated V&A exhibition opening this Saturday, 18th May 2019. In a world-famous museum, going to the toilet is not usually part of their exhibition experience. Happily, the V&A has embraced this natural necessity as a logical component of their upcoming exhibition about food, the Loowatt waterless flush toilet sitting pretty in the ‘compost’ section of ‘FOOD: Bigger than the Plate.’ Loowatt’s presence at the V&A comes hot on the heels of our winning the ‘Game-Changer’ Prize last week at Cleantech Innovate 2019, a leading annual showcase of game-changing clean technologies. I am likely biased, but I sense there is an awareness and sentiment shift occurring on a mainstream level about the importance of sanitation as a world health challenge. Given 4.5 billion people lack access to safely-managed sanitation and 1 million deaths each year are caused by fecal-borne illnesses, at Loowatt we are glad it’s becoming more palatable to talk openly about serious shit that happens every day. FOOD: Bigger than the Plate is an exploration of how innovative individuals, communities and organisations are radically re-inventing how we grow, distribute and experience food. Our Loowatt waterless flush toilet deals with the inescapable byproduct of food, sealing human waste into biodegradable polymer film for anaerobic digestion. In the digester, human waste is converted into valuable renewable energy and fertiliser; so upon reflection, why wouldn’t an innovative sanitation solution take centre stage when talking about the food cycle? Bravo to the exhibition curators for taking this bold step and bringing the important subject of sanitation out from behind closed doors. 
November 19th 2018, the fifth annual World Toilet Day, is our most exciting to date. Over the past year we have been honoured to work with Laguna Water, a joint venture of Manila Water and the Laguna Provincial Government, on rolling out the Laguna Portable Toilet Solution (PTS), piloting a first-of-its-kind utility business model for providing non-sewered household toilets. Today, following a successful pilot, we are excited to announce that we will be supporting the Laguna PTS scale-up starting in 2019.
Loowatt supplies waterless flush toilets and sanitation solutions for global markets. We have been developing and testing whole value-chain sanitation hardware in the UK (public toilets) and Madagascar (household toilets) since 2013. We have been working with utilities in both countries since 2016. As of August 2018, our toilets have been used by over 100,000 customers and we have delivered 200 tonnes of fecal sludge to closed-loop treatment.
A mechanical rake collecting solid waste (Karsten Moran for The New York Times).
Both sewers and on-site sanitation systems face increasing challenges due to climate change, as highlighted by recent droughts and floods in global cities such as Cape Town and Jakarta.[1] 29% of the world’s population is served by basic sanitation: Latrines and septic tanks where waste is untreated, spreading disease rampantly, especially in floods.[2]
© Arcadia.
Loowatt toilets have just landed at Arcadia Spectacular, a spectacle of cutting-edge engineering which marks the start of Loowatt's event season in 2018.
Loowatt’s Tech Team Leader, Fernanda Costa, shares her insights on eco-packaging.
Fernanda leads the development and design of Loowatt’s polymer toilet refills, processing and product usability and lifecycle. Fernanda has 13 years in design and commercial development of novel packaging systems and products for large consumer clients including TetraPak, McDonalds and Pret A Manger.  In early October, while pneumonic plague was spreading in Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar, the youth block of the city’s central prison encountered an untimely and potentially deadly situation.
 © Chester Holme "Traditional flush toilets aren’t an option in many parts of the world, but neither is leaving people with unsafe and unhygienic choices. Now, one company is piloting a new loo that's waterless, off-grid and able to charge your phone. Lina Zeldovich travels to Madagascar to witness the start of a lavatorial revolution."
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