Building a new era of non-sewered, safely managed sanitation for all
More than 3.5 billion people—close to half of the world’s population—use unsafe sanitation facilities and services. Starting with the launch of the Reinvented Toilet Challenge in 2011, our initiative for transformative technologies and commercialization has focused on accelerating the development and commercialization of safe, sustainable, and inclusive sanitation solutions for the world’s poorest people. We focus on two primary innovations: the off-grid, pathogen-killing reinvented toilet, and the omni-processor, a community-scale, human waste treatment facility.
Together with scientists, engineers, product designers, manufacturers, distributors, utilities, and governments, we are investing in demonstrating transformative sanitation technologies and products and bringing them to the markets where they are needed most, starting in South Africa, Senegal, China, India, and Thailand. The International Standards Organization and its country members are paving the way to market adoption by supporting the implementation of ISO 30500, which defines the operational requirements for reinvented toilets and omni-processors as well as for other existing and future standalone sanitation technologies that don’t require sewer connections. The standard also sets targets for safety, processing capability, and performance.
Learn more about our partners below and explore how your organization can play a role in transforming global sanitation.
Key Partners
Reinvented toilet technologies
- Bristol Robotics Laboratory
- California Institute of Technology
- Clear (Suzhou) Environmental Technology
- Colorado State University – The Energy Institute
- Cranfield University
- Duke University – Center for WaSH-AID
- EOOS NEXT
- Firmenich
- Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag)
- Yixing Eco-Sanitary Manufacture
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- Helbling Group
- University of Toronto
- Wanruo Environmental Engineering Technology
- Asian Institute of Technology
- University of Science and Technology Beijing
- Stanford University
- Columbia University
- University of South Florida
- University of Kwazulu-Natal WASH R&D Center
Omni-processor technologies
Omni-ingestor technologies
Key Resources
Learn about opportunities to develop and provide innovative sanitation solutions and services using market research available at Gates Open Research.
The resources you’ll find there, spanning product design to market development, include: