Virginia Gardiner, Founder of Loowatt: “our greatest success - is every time someone uses one of our toilets“
Meet Virginia Gardiner, Founder of Loowatt
1. Describe your startup in two sentences?
At Loowatt we are aiming to become a leading provider of sanitation solutions for today: Closed-loop, value-generating waterless toilet systems that deliver a world class toilet experience for people in cities without sewers, and off-grid locations. We have developed unique, patented toilet technology, and are now expanding operations in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and Durban, South Africa, as well as for glamping, events and construction in the UK.
2. What gave you the inspiration?
In my 20s, when I lived in San Francisco, a friend told me in an earthquake that I could drink water from my toilet cistern. Perhaps obvious, the idea was new to me, and a wake-up call that every time I flush the toilet, I flush away drinking water. It was a discouraging time for American politics: I entered the work force just after the 2000 presidential election. My reaction was a personal re-examination of the culture I came from. I read Ellen Lupton and J. Abbot Miller’s book The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste, which posits that plumbing epitomises our consumption addiction—that our treatment of excrement makes a fine microcosm for America’s general attitude toward resources, a mix of rapacious and religious. Some years later, I went on to do a master’s degree in industrial design at Royal College of Art / Imperial College, and decided to re-examine the toilet, developing a concept that would be waterless, work nicely in my London apartment, and turn sh*t into a commodity. The result was the original Loowatt toilet, which at the time I named the Gardiner CH4 – an homage to Thomas Crapper, and waste-to-biogas as fuel.
3. What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
I think it’s simple to describe our greatest success – it’s every time someone uses one of our toilets. Today about 4000 people living in densely populated urban areas without sewers or safe sanitation are using our toilets at home, and that number is increasing rapidly, while our toilets have been used more than 5 million times in events. Success is defined not only in the benefits we bring to these people’s health, dignity, and quality of life, but in that we are able to deliver this with sustainable technology in a truly scalable business model, in which the toilets deliver a high-quality, valued experience that people think is worth paying for.
Greatest challenges? I’d sum it up with the challenges that are unique to working in toilets, as its not just about the toilet. Over the years we have gone from building our own end-to-end solutions, including anaerobic digestors that generate biogas, to a much more scalable model of partnering with waste utility providers to deliver end-to-end systems. Doing our own energy and fertiliser generation is a thrill, and we still do it at one of our sites in Antananarivo, Madagascar. And, the technical knowledge we’ve gathered along the way is hugely valuable. Still, in hindsight the “let’s do everything” approach slowed our pathway to scaling up the business. It also involved dealing with a lot of sh*t – and I don’t mean that figuratively! That said, the joy of working in sanitation is the humanity, humility and humour that you get from being around people who aren’t afraid to engage with this every day part of life that’s so human.
4. What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?
Sustainable sanitation systems are needed to meet ALL of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals at multiple levels (According to a recent UCL study - Priti Parikh et al., 2021). Particularly impacted are those SDGs linked to safe sanitation access, management of waste, carbon emissions reductions, water conservation, human health, and social justice.
Using our software that supports servicers in all markets, Loowatt tracks, and will continue to track, the impacts of our systems on beneficiaries and the environment. We try to keep the impact KPIs simple as each has a multiplier effect: The number of toilet users and visits is linked to human health and happiness benefits; the amount of waste collected and safety managed links to many environmental benefits, and the amounts of energy generated from waste and GHG emissions reduced are very important, as raw untreated sewage currently contributes an estimated 2-6% of human-created methane emissions.
5. How has Covid affected your business?
COVID created major delays across all of our plans with relation to sales growth – in the UK, the events sector shut down at the moment we were ready to leverage successes delivering our own services to pivot into a B2B sales model, and it’s taken a year to get this work back on track. Overseas, long lockdowns made it very difficult for us to build relationships with new partners and customers, which also delayed progress in the last two years.
COVID also changed our ways of working in ways that weren’t altogether bad. We now understand the benefits of hybrid working. We were forced to cut costs across the company and in a few respects this helped us to drive more leanness and efficiency in our operations.
6. When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?
An inventor or a writer
7. If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
Sustainable agriculture or Solid Waste Management, though I’d probably need more education first. I might also try to get involved with political activism, as I see many things I’d like to change.
8.What would you save in a fire?
A pink security blanket my grandmother knitted that I keep for good luck – it’s silly but I’m serious!
9. What is your happy track?
O-o-h Child by the Five Stairsteps
10. What’s your motto?
You only go around once – I think about this when I think about prioritising what matters
11. What are you most looking forward to in 2023?
Scaling up our business