Saniverte’ Public Dry Toilets^®

The brand Saniverte^®concentrates Ecosphere’ entire know-how in the field of public dry toilets, allowing to adapt to most situations such as:

• a use in both winter and summer periods in temperate climates
• a functioning in very hot (tropical environments) or very cold (high altitude) areas
• A very intense frequentation, concentrated on few months or spread over the whole year
• Implementation in places without road access.

The Company

For the last decades there is in France a demand for a new sort of toilets, waterless and without odours, in which the final waste would be easy to handle and non-polluting. Or, mainly, a demand for dry toilets.

This demand was first expressed by owners of mountain refuges, but also by skiing stations’ operators in order to equip ski runs and ski lifts.

It explains why Ecosphere originally worked with the French Alpine Club (Refuge of Parmelan, Refuge Carro) but also with skiing stations (as early as 1995, Ecosphere was equipping the height of the Aiguille du Midi in Chamonix: 12 dry toilets at a 3842 meters altitude).

Early 90’, the available technologies on the market, coming mainly from Scandinavian countries, were extremely simple, but also poorly elaborated: a storage tank in which faeces are permanently showered by urines, a process generating massive odours, fly hatching in the summer and the need to evacuate urine-filled matters extremely “disgusting”.

Since its creation in 1991, Ecosphere Technologies undertook to go beyond these basic technologies and conceived innovating processes.

Immediately appeared the necessity to store the solid matter apart from the urines in order to dry them or compost them afterwards thanks to earthworms. Indeed, all the traditional dry toilets’ nuisances are due to the fact that urines perpetually mix up with solid matters.
Therefore, two dry toilet systems, both using a slanted conveyor belt separating liquid from solid matters, were patented: automatic bagging and drying toilets, and earthworm composting toilets.

The basis of the technology being settled, a meticulous development was started in order to optimize the functioning of these toilets.

1. Application of the Swiss technique used to dry the hay in barn through ventilation and solar heating of the air in order to dry the faeces.
2. Elaboration of big “carousels” to store the drying matters by using big stainless discs working on ball bearings. This upgrade enabled to reduce the size of the systems and therefore the size of the technical area, upgrade really appreciated by the high altitude refuge’ builders.

Research and development is deeply anchored within the company’s structure and several programs are currently led, as you can read in the part of the website dedicated to this theme.

Today, Ecosphere Technologies gathers 10 employees (4 technicians, 3 engineers, 2 sales representatives and one assistant) in a new building including offices and workshop. Since 2005, Ecosphere Technologies counts on a two-digits growth and is developing its international activities (see the “export section”). Since 2007, Ecosphere Technologies’ turnover is exceeding one million Euros.