change:WATER Labs

4.2Bn+ people lack safely-managed sanitation, largely because they live in places with no sewage plumbing, so they can’t flush. When flushing waste isn’t an option, sewage builds up, especially in crowded communities. To keep communities safe and clean, the sewage waste has to be collected frequently, which messy, dangerous and costly! Poor sanitation poisons local water, perpetuating disease and poverty. Unmanaged/onsite sewage emits ~4% of annual man-made methane, contributing to climate change. Currently, providing safely-managed sanitation requires trade-offs with economic and environmental sustainability--trading off excessive water-use, energy-use, cost and/or safety. Every day, a flush-toilet typically uses a bathtub’s-worth of clean water to flush away a single person’s-worth of waste. Alternatively, currently-available waterless/non-flush toilets need frequent waste-removal to avoid overflowing and/or discharge waste and excessive GHGs into the environment. We need a more sustainable way to “flush” human waste, especially for fast-growing communities and water-stressed areas, that requires no water, external power or plumbing. With dire need for drop-in sanitation that quickly eliminates onsite waste in un-sewered urban areas, transitional communities, challenging geographies & emergencies, cWL has developed the "iThrone", a drop-in, no-flush toilet that SHRINKS waste onsite, converting it to pure water vapor & power (bit.ly/shrink2020). Human waste is 95% water, so the iThrone uses 2 novel technologies to get rid of onsite waste: ‚”shrink-wrap for crap”, a low-cost breathable membrane that dehydrates waste, soaking up the water content of waste, converting it into molecular water vapor; we’re also developing a ‚”pee-powered bio-battery” that uses microbes to convert urine into electricity (bit.ly/biobatt2020). By rapidly shrinking daily waste onsite, the iThrone extends clean, low-cost sanitation to places with no power or plumbing. The iThrone not only does not USE or POLLUTE water, it converts waste back INTO clean water. Unlike MOST non-flush toilets, which need emptying every 1-2 days, the iThrone only needs to be emptied 1-2x/mo—so it reduces waste collection costs by >50% & cleans up communities. With fewer collections per toilet, collectors can service up to 20x more toilets, scaling servicing capacity without expanding collection fleets. Our first iThrones target the huge need for safe sanitation in crowded urban areas/slums & for drop-in sanitation in emergencies. The iThrone has potential to affect real systems-level transformation: getting safe, clean sanitation to more people in more places at lower cost.

How is your business better?: No other container-based toilet can quickly, cleanly, cheaply get rid of daily volumes onsite. All other non-flush options are either costly, messy or complicated/bulky. CONTAINER-BASED toilets fill up fast and require frequent, costly waste-removal. COMPOSTING TOILETS are very slow to convert waste and, because they are hard to maintain, often fail, so can spread disease. “Re-INVENTED TOILETS” use complex technologies to rapidly deal with onsite waste, but are too expensive to scale. SEWAGE-COLLECTION SERVICERS would in fact be our customers, because they focus on waste collection and need lower-maintenance/”smarter” toilets to reduce their collection frequencies and costs. Our approach uniquely tackles a key challenge of distributed sanitation--cutting down on collections by quickly shrinking waste inside the toilet itself. And it does this in a way that is LOW-COST and GOOD FOR THE PLANET--converting waste into pure molecular water and power. The iThrone is the truly green toilet--saving money and the planet. It is the only off-line toilet that can get rid of onsite waste quickly, cheaply and cleanly when flushing isn’t an option. By evaporating waste, the iThrone makes clean sanitation available to anyone anywhere (even in places with no power or plumbing). With our proprietary evaporative membrane and bio-battery technologies, the iThrone is completely stand-alone, self-powered and “self-flushing”. Shrinking waste fast onsite completely transforms the economics of “off-line” sanitation. The iThrone cuts collection costs (by 50%) while increasing toilet access and servicing efficiency. The cost to install and maintain a comparable toilet could instead fund 4-5 iThrone toilets. While most container-toilets need to be emptied every 1-2 days, the iThrone only needs emptying 1- 2x/month. So, sewage-collectors can service 3-20x more toilets, allowing their operations to be more scalable and pro table. So, ultimately, the iThrone will get safe sanitation to more people at lower cost. The iThrone is: --SAFER (eliminating waste fast onsite); --INSTALLABLE ANYWHERE (evaporating waste instead of flushing liberates our toilets from hookups to infrastructure); --LOWER PRICE (due to simpler hardware vs comparable options); --LOWER-MAINTENANCE and LOWER COST (by reducing waste-collection frequencies). Shrinking daily waste onsite increases collection-efficiency, thus more scalable and sustainable servicing • Fewer collections-per-toilet lowers costs • Fewer collectors can cover more toilets, increasing servicing capacity • More efficient servicing saves costs for sanitation providers (eg municipalities) • Our toilets are drop-in deployable anywhere • Lower costs and increased deployability increases access

How will your company generate income and what makes you think your traget customer will pay?: We are targeting the $18bn/yr market for portable toilets, selling our hardware+consumables (toilets + monthly replacements of the waste-collection bags made of our evaporative membrane)--essentially a razor/razor-blade or subscription-based revenue model. Initially, we will sell B2B to BUSINESSES along the sanitation value-chain: (a) INSTALLERS (eg construction contractors and equipment integrators, who install sanitation hardware into constructions, pre-fab builds and equipment such as transportation) who need lower CAPEX options that require costly build-outs of surrounding/supporting infrastructure; and (b) SERVICERS (eg sewage-waste collectors, port-a-potty providers) who distribute and/or service portable sanitation, and who need MUCH LOWER OPEX/maintenance toilets to reduce collection costs and frequencies, so their businesses can be more profitable (bigger margins, scaled servicing coverage and thus increased revenues). Our B2B customers would serve as initial distribution channels. In future, we’ll plan to sell directly to large FUNDERS (government/NGO-buyers, who are all large procurers of sanitation hardware). We already have $150K in pre-sales. With no outbound marketing, we’ve already seen aggressive pent-up demand with LOIs for $2MM in sales, plus inbound interest from 5-6 additional B2B customers who have offered us paid pilots to adapt our solution to their applications. In each case, our solution solves problems for these customers which no other available or emerging alternative can. For our construction contractor customers, our solution allows them to install toilets in regions that have no water infrastructure. For equipment integrators (eg manufacturers of transportation equipment), our solution is a much more compact and cleaner, lower-maintenance toilet solution than chemical toilets. Our original plan was to manufacture and distribute the toilet hardware ourselves. However, because our first customers all have established manufacturing & engineering capacity, they can produce & deploy the bulkier toilet hardware into their existing channels/regions, we can pursue an out-licensing model for the toilet hardware, while we focus on producing & distributing the “smarter”, easier-to-distribute evaporative bags (really the "brains" of our solution and the recurring-revenue component). Ultimately, this is a leaner, faster global growth strategy for us—significantly reducing our costs & allowing us to quickly gain scale across markets, geographies & sectors. Our toilets are much lower cost than comparable options. Because of their simple design, our iThrone toilets can priced at 2-5x less than what our customers pay for comparables. Also, because comparable toilets are much more costly to maintenance and service, we can price the iThrone’s replacement bags to generate healthy margins of $20- 300/toilet/year (capturing on average ~70% margin).

Our first-version iThrone was successfully piloted in Uganda in 2020 (funded by the US, UK and Dutch governments). We also have $150K in pre-sales ($50K B2G customer, $100K from AB Inbev). As mentioned above, while we’ve mounted no outbound marketing, we have significant inbound customer interest, because our solution addresses a number of unmet customer needs for off-line, more deployable, portable, compact or greener/cleaner sanitation. From the inbound interest, we are currently working on two customer-paid pilots (to be deployed in the next 3-6mo), one with a construction company in Panama, and another with a sanitation services company in Zambia—both of which have the potential to unleash 50K-150K units in follow-on sales in the next 12mo. Beyond these, our future customer pipeline also includes: an Indian manufacturer/distributor of port-a-potties; two manufacturers of sanitation solutions for transportation equipment (India, Singapore); a Mexican construction contractor that is contracted by their government to build tens of thousands of housing units in low-income communities; and a few US Government contractors that provide housing and emergency shelter to HUD and FEMA contracts. In total, these potential customers represent up to 56,000 units in the next 2yrs. As demonstrated by our early inbound interest, initially our customers are likely to be: construction contractors (who either need our toilet to install in their projects, or need them for the workers onsite during a build); equipment Integrators (manufacturers of transportation vehicles/equipment and port-a-potties); sewage management servicers (companies that deploy toilets and/or provide waste collection services for a fee). Eventually, we expect to sell to governments, NGOs and their contractors (eg UNICEF, FEMA, etc)). OVERALL, INSTALLERS are looking for lower CAPEX toilets. SERVICERS need lower OPEX toilets. Our toilets are both.

In Feb-Mar 2020, we successfully piloted the first (squat-version, public-use) iThrone toilets in Uganda. These units provided 400 users/wk with safe, clean sanitation, in a crowded urban area, with no waste discharge or odor onsite, and proved 6-10x onsite volume reduction, thereby supporting 2-4weeks of use-cycle between servicing. Prior to 2021, we raised $700K of non-dilutive grants and awards (including funding from the Gates Foundation, the UN, and the governments of Turkey, US, UK and the Netherlands) to fund development from concept to pilot. We’ve successfully scaled up manufacturing of our evaporative membrane, in partnership with a large US-based thin film extruder. In 2021, we raised a $1.4MM seed round from investors. In early 2021-22, we filed global patents on our membrane technology and approach to evaporative sanitation. Our solution has attracted global acclaim and has received numerous recognitions, including an invitation by the Turkish Government to present it at the 2019 UN Climate Summit, and selection as one of Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas. As mentioned above, we already have pre-sales of $150K, LOIs from 3 B2B customers ($2MM in potential sales), and 5-6 offers of customer-paid pilots that may unleash 50K-150K or more in sales in the next 2-5yrs. In terms of near-term go-to-market milestones, we are currently working on two commercial pilots with potential to unleash 50K+ in unit sales. Since Summer 2021, we have been working with a large Panamanian construction company to adapt our Uganda iThrone prototype (communal-use, squat toilet) to a more advanced Western (sitting-style), residential toilet for household bathrooms. This company is contracted on a multi-year project, funded by the Government of Panama (GoP) and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IADB), to install bathrooms for low-income and indigenous households. This project stalled after 30K installations, because the current toilet solution depends on hookups to inflowing water infrastructure—however, there remain another 150K households needing bathroom installations but with no access to water infrastructure. This contractor eagerly approached us with keen interest in our waterless solution, offering to fund the redesign work and field pilot of the upgraded iThrone. We are currently in the final phases of testing the redesigned iThrone in our labs before deploying the pilot units to Panama in the next 2-3mo. This pilot will run for an additional 3mo in communities around Panama City. Already, the GoP and IADB are keenly interested in the outcomes of this pilot. Should the pilot be successful, the plan is to work with this contractor, the IADB and GoP to have our iThrone be selected as to hardware solution for the next phase of the sanitation project, with the potential to deploy another 50K+ units in the next 2-5yrs. This pilot will also serve as validation for the Mexican construction contractor mentioned above, as well as a few potential customers in East Asia and the US. Once we’ve deployed the Panama pilot, we will embark on another commercial pilot, funded by AB Inbev and in partnership with a sanitation services company in Zambia. We will adapt the sitting iThrone design from household use to higher-use urban public toilets. The Zambian sanitation company will deploy and service these units for a 3-6mo pilot. Upon successful validation, they have interest to purchase a number of these iThrones for deployment in the next year. Both our Panama and Zambia partners have capacity to manufacture and distribute iThrone toilets in their regions through outlicensing arrangements, while cWL would produce and sell the replacement evaporative bags. Additionally, we’ve also been developing more advanced functionalities of our iThrone toilets, to be able in a few years, after initial market launch, to address more upscale customer needs in green construction, emergency relief, modular construction/micro-homes, transportation and smart toilets. We will launch our toilets to the market in the next 12mo, project sales of 23K units in 2023, and project profitability in 2024. By 2026, we project deployments of 0.4MM toilets, and profitability of ~$60MM. Each year, we expect to see the share of recurring revenues (from replacement membrane sales) increase over revenues from toilet hardware sales. With our seed round, we have sufficient runway for 24+ months plus additional patent filings. We expect to raise our Series A round in late 2023.