Sarphati Sanitation Challenge announces five finalists
The jury of the Sarphati Sanitation Challenge selected the five finalists who will compete in the next stage of the challenge. The finalist are impact-driven enterprises that entered the challenge with innovative easy access toilet concepts and sludge treatment.
The final winner will be announced on 5 November during the Closing Ceremony of the Amsterdam International Water Week 2021.
Growth models
Ten semi-finalists have been participating in training workshops over the past months to improve their concepts and business models. This training culminated at the Stockholm World Water Week where the semi-finalists presented a 1-minute pitch video.
The semi-finalists provided additional information on their solutions, business models, and pathway to growth for the jury to evaluate. The jury then assessed how well each solution fit the selection criteria of improving health, increasing access to sanitation, innovation, scalability, readiness, and sustainability.
The five selected finalists will continue in the next stage of the competition where they will get to present their solution ‘live’ to the jury.
Selected finalists
The jury selected the following five finalists:
Aerosan (Nepal)
Social enterprise Aerosan developed a design build-operate public toilet management solution through a network of pay-per-use, gender and disabled inclusive hygienic and modern facilities, known as sanitation HUB. The facility is built on key partnerships with local governments and with the Sanitation Workers Co-op, which is made up of 500 Dalit women living in informal settlements.
AKYAS (Jordan)
Start-up enterprise AKYAS innovated a new faecal sludge management value chain for non-sewered sanitation systems. The service chain aims to provide safe sanitation at low cost, recover resources from human waste in a hygienic, user-friendly approach, and prevent cross-contamination between human waste and the surrounding environment. AKYAS products generate additional financial flow from the recovery of waste-derived products, such as organic fertiliser.
change:WATER Labs (USA)
Impact-driven enterprise Change:WATER Labs created iThrone, a waste-shrinking, drop-in toilet that flushes away human waste by evaporating it, extending safe, clean toilet access to communities with no plumbing. The evaporation shrinks the volume of waste inside the toilet and cuts down on collection.
Mosan (Switzerland)
Social enterprise Mosan provides an ecological, inclusive, market-based sanitation system including a mobile urine-diverting dry-toilet. It is a stand-alone, easily deployable, replicable circular sanitation system, which is low tech, affordable and locally producible. Mosan’s strategy is to scale up via social franchising, seeking to enable safe, feasible and accessible community-led sanitation services, thus maximizing its social, environmental and economic impact.
WASHKING (Ghana)
Social sanitation enterprise WASHKING developed environmentally safe, accessible and affordable biodigester toilets for low-income and underserved urban households and institutions. The company offers supply and installation of the toilet as a full sustainable last-mile toilet distribution service. It uses pay-as-you-go technology such as smart door lock and digital payment.
About Sarphati Sanitation Challenge
The Sarphati Sanitation Challenge builds on the bi-annual awards that were initiated by Aqua for All and World Waternet in 2013 to honour contributions to the global sanitation & public health challenge through entrepreneurship. Finalists have a chance to win the grand prize of 100,000 euros for implementation of their solution, and additional Accenture support after the challenge.
The challenge is held in honour of Dr. Samuel Sarphati, a 19th century doctor, city planner and chemist who radically improved public health in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, by collecting and transporting human waste out of the city.
