ABOUT TOILET BOARD COALITION
Established in 2015, The Toilet Board Coalition (TBC) is a business-led membership organisation driving private sector engagement in SDG6.2. We facilitate large-small company partnerships, public-private collaboration and run a business accelerator for SGBs (small & growing businesses) to contribute to universal access to sustainable sanitation products & services.
Over half the world currently does not have access to safe sanitation, meaning they have a dirty unsafe toilet or no toilet at all, their waste is left exposed and untreated, and disease can run rampant. Sanitation systems have long been considered an expensive public responsibility; however, this misconception is strongly linked to outdated technologies and approaches.
There is an army of entrepreneurs and businesses in our network challenging this age-old approach to sanitation and proving that sanitation businesses can grow and thrive while serving low-income markets through new approaches and a strategic enabling environment.
We are building the Sanitation Economy – a growing marketplace of products and services, renewable resource flows, data and information that is transforming cities, communities, and businesses and driving progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
OUR VISION
We envision a global marketplace – a sanitation economy – for self-sustaining and resilient sanitation systems that serve our population, strengthen our planet and generate economic returns for businesses of all sizes and geographies.
WE ARE BUILDING THE SANITATION ECONOMY
Over the last five years the Toilet Board Coalition members have driven a shift towards a new framing of sanitation. Replacing outdated perceptions around sanitation as solely an unaffordable public cost and cumbersome technologies, we advocate for the innovative business opportunity of sanitation provision.
The sanitation economy is a market-based approach to the sanitation system that harnesses the valuable resources and information within and builds on innovative business models and strategic collaborations to provide sustainable sanitation products and services to everyone, everywhere. A thriving sanitation economy mitigates climate change, lowers health care costs, protects our habitat, and provides water, energy, and nutrients back to global systems in desperate need.
THE TOILET ECONOMY
Products and services that provide safe toilet access for everyone, everywhere. This spans centralised and decentralised, sewered and non-sewered, high and low water tables, low-income to high, rural, urban and peri-urban. Toilet designs apply circular sanitation economy principals to minimise waste and greenhouse gases and capture data to feed the smart sanitation economy.
CIRCULAR SANITATION ECONOMY
Toilet resources (The TBC’s preferred term for human waste) feed into a system which replaces traditional waste management with a circular economy approach. It connects the biocycle, using multiple forms of biological waste, recovering nutrients and water, creating value-adding products such as renewable energy, organic fertilisers, proteins and more.
SMART SANITATION ECONOMY
Digitised sanitation systems that optimise data for operating efficiencies, maintenance, plus consumer use and health information insights. Sanitation is included in smart cities’ architecture, monitoring public toilet usage, sewage treatment and health indicators, and detects needs for maintenance and repair throughout the system.
