Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

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  • Kevinkuhn
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Re: Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

Hello,

I want to give a quick update and answer the questions above.

First of all, there is a great article about the German market for sustainable festival toilets published at the 5th Dry Toilet Conference by Roach et al. :

www.susana.org/_resources/documents/defa...323-7-1458726148.pdf

That article might answer a couple of questions, however the sectors development is moving very quickly. The numbers are not correctly anymore and for example EcoToiletten has today around 300 composting toilets available and we fully covered the Feel Festival with 18.000 visitors on four days with 180 toilets. It is hard to tell what market share the companies altogether have, but it will be no more than 5%.

The companies (that I am aware of) are listed in the article. If one might also include the german speaking part of Switzerland, than there is also Kompotoi in Zurich. All of us are frequently in contact and meet at least once a year. No mergers happen so far and competition is fairly low. Everyone has the goal to promote sustainable sanitation in their own fashion.

We dispose the material usually to regular composting plants with the waste code "AVV 200399". But in a few regions only MBT plants are available. Also a few biogas plants take the material. However, waste water treatment plants are not an option for the solid residuals, because it would disorder the processes.

The supplier of chemical toilets dispose the material directly into municipal waste water plants. However the material need the be diluted with water by a factor of 20 (see attachted file from the Bavarian ministry for hydrology). Smaller treatment plants are unable to process that load in a short period. Therefore at larger events in rural areas the supplier of chemical toilets need to approach more WWTPs.

@Florent. Please keep us updated of the developments on the French market.

Best
Kevin
Non-Water Sanitation e.V.
www.nonwatersanitation.de
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EcoToiletten - Rental for public composting toilets for cities and music festivals in Germany
www.ecotoiletten.de

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  • Florent
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Re: Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

Bonjour Kevin,
je suis ravi de voir que ça évolue bien en Allemagne. Nous sommes toujours en train de travailler sur une étude scientifique de caractérisation des impacts des filières de traitement pour les toilettes sèches mobiles évènementiels en France. Ainsi, je suis preneur du ou des textes de loi allemand qui spécifient la légalité de disposer des résidus solides (sciure de bois, du papier toilette et des matières fécales) comme les déchets municipaux dans un MBT usine.
Merci de ton retour.
A+
--
Hello Kevin ,
I am delighted to see that it is evolving well in Germany. We are still working on a scientific study to characterize the impact of treatment processes for mobile event- dry toilets in France . So, I am taker or German laws that specify the law to dispose of solid waste (sawdust , toilet paper and faeces ) such as municipal waste in an MBT plant .
Thank you for your return.
A +

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  • Elisabeth
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Re: Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

Dear Kevin,

Thanks for this update, much appreciated!

A couple of small questions. You said:

In the last year the communication between the different companies got better and with that also knowledge sharing.


Who are these companies or how many of them are there? How do you overcome the issue that you're also competitors? Have there perhaps been any mergers?

And you said:

However, it also leads to competitive disadvantages against suppliers of chemical toilets


How do they dispose of their collected waste? Can they dump it at any municipal wastewater treatment plant without any problems? They also have to pay a fee, right?

What is your share of the market now for these festivals in Germany, i.e. can you estimate what % of festival users in Germany can now use composting toilets instead of chemical toilets? Is it around 0.1 %, 1% or perhaps even 10%? I am curious.

Kind regards,
Elisabeth
Dr. Elisabeth von Muench
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  • Kevinkuhn
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Re: Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

I want to give a quick update about one progress in mobile sustainable sanitation in Germany.

In the last year the communication between the different companies got better and with that also knowledge sharing. Apart from seeing everyone become more professional in all aspects, I want to share the development regarding the disposal of the collected feces and urine.

In the past years there were no legal ways for proper treatment/composting for the residuals. Therefore we started our activities by storing the material. At that point the quantities were very low and unproblematic.

However, as the market demand for composting toilets in festivals increases, every player in the field needed to come up with a legal and scalable solution. Through intense research and lobbying at the different stakeholders in the waste spectrum (administration, unions, collectors, composting sites) there is now a solution.

It is legal to dispose the solid residuals (sawdust, toilet paper and feces) as municipal waste in a MBT plant (Mechanical - Biological - Treatment plant) if you can declare your material as waste. At these facilities the material gets either composted or incinerated. The composted material will usually be used for non-food applications as i.e. parks.

With that way of disposal there are also a couple of downsides:

1) It is not totally transparent what is happening with the material, if it gets composted or incinerated. We rely only on oral statements by the facility staff.

2) The material needs to contain very little fluids. This requires a filtering of liquids and solid matter before disposal, which is an extra process and coupled with technical complexity. Especially in public toilets the share of liquids is higher than on private toilets. The liquids need to go into the waste water treatment plant, which produces higher costs and the valuable urine can´get reused.

3) The costs for disposal are quite high. Prices range currently between 160€/t - 260€/t. Additionally a container needs to be ordered to transport the material from the festival site to the composting facility, which produces extra costs of 90€ - 160€ .

4) A few of the facilities still refuse to take the material and the number of facilities is limited in a region. The reasons for refusal are usually fear and lack of knowledge. This leads in such scenario to higher distances and with that to higher costs and unnecessary truck emissions.


We are happy to have a first solution. However, it also leads to competitive disadvantages against suppliers of chemical toilets. We at EcoToiletten (and I suppose every other player in Germany agrees) wish more support from local administrations and composting facility to solve the problems described above. Especially by having the chance to dispose the material in every composting site without special treatment permissions (which are vastly available) the financial disadvantages would decrease. Also administrative support through sharing of knowledge would help to reduce concerns about the material.

I felt that sharing this development might be helpful for one or another. Hopefully in the future we will receive money from the disposal instead of bearing the costs of it ;)

Kevin
Non-Water Sanitation e.V.
www.nonwatersanitation.de
www.nonwatersanitation.org (english)

EcoToiletten - Rental for public composting toilets for cities and music festivals in Germany
www.ecotoiletten.de
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  • Pootopia
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Re: Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

[Start of Page 3 of the discussion]

We are now very ready to go to supply up to 1200 loos into the german festival market.. So it is now not a problem regarding supplying events with how ever many they need. We are really looking forward to hearing from different people and businesses who may be interested in using the Natural Event loos and systems in a franchised system where everything is supplied.. lets talk some time!

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  • Kevinkuhn
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Re: Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

Hey everybody,

I just saw this topic recently and think I should also introduce my company for composting toilets for festivals.

We are EcoToiletten (German for Ecotoilets) and are based in Berlin. We started in 2013 and did 50 Events in our area so far and gained a lot of experience from that. www.ecotoiletten.de. We see a great potential in Germany for composting toilets, because most of the users are very much aware of the "green" topics. Also the user feedback was very good.

But there are some drawbacks or barriers at the moment here in Germany:

1) is that the system is fairly new for everyone, since rentals are just up for 2-3 years.
2) all the companies are still very small and can´t fully supply bigger events
3) the competition with conventional toilets is very though, especially for construction sites (which is actually the largest market for Dixi and Co.)
4) there is insufficient regulation about treatment of feaces and administrations are very risk averse or unaware of secure treatment methods
5) lack of capital for those small market players

@Florent: It is good to see, that the scene in France is well-connected. Actually in Germany we are also about to improve our network throughout all the companies. The aim needs to be to prove the benefits of the concept of ecological toilets and to increase the volume of feacal matter. It´s good to hear, that natural event was successful with that plan and convinced the EPA in UK. Something similar should be possible here in Germany.

I also wrote a blogpost on Jürgens Website, Saniblog, at the beginning of the year about portable toilets in Germany.


Kevin
Non-Water Sanitation e.V.
www.nonwatersanitation.de
www.nonwatersanitation.org (english)

EcoToiletten - Rental for public composting toilets for cities and music festivals in Germany
www.ecotoiletten.de
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  • Florent
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Re: Festival toilets in Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, ...)

Hello Every body,

I just would like to inform you that the annual meeting of mobil dry toilets renters which are RAE's members will take place in october (10/11/12) in south of france.

This is the "Réseau de l'Assainissement Ecologique" annual meeting which regroup around 20 mobil dry toilets renters engage in an durable and ecological by-products management.

So, some partners from belgium and switzerland join us every year and we would like to share more and more french experience about our practices.

you are welcome to join us even if our english speaking is not very easy.

You will find enclose the program of this week-end.

cheers!

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  • Elisabeth
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Re: Festival toilets

Hi Enno,

This is interesting - so you have found German large scale composting plants that are willing to take in the faecal matter from your festival toilets? I thought they normally reject that because they only take "green organic waste" from kitchens and gardens, but not material that might contain pathogens?
(see also this thread: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/70-com...-sludgemobile-toilet)

Please tell us more about which company you are collaborating with and how they got around any legal issues in Germany? What do they do with the finished compost afterwards?

Also, could you please post some photos from your toilets at the festivals?

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. I just spotted you in front of the camera while watching the end of the live stream from the SuSanA meeting! :-)
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  • ennoschroeder
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Re: Festival toilets

Hello SuSannah,

sorry for the silence. We just finished our festival season here and are now back in office.

As far as the composting process is concerned we are currently "outsourcing" the process to official composting plants as we didn't want to make mistakes in our first season.

We have already spent quite some time in investigating other composting options and are going to continue with that very soon. Seems to be good winter work :-)

I will keep you updated.

Have a nice day,
best,
Enno
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  • Pootopia
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Re: Festival toilets

Hi All, Hamish here from Natural Event.
The Environment Agency in UK took three years to give me the permit to do what we do. They in fact created a special document explicitly for us as there was no precedent for them to rule on. We gained approval in 2011 after three years of operation on the UK. The EA had full knowledge of what we were doing in that time and actually told us they would 'unofficially' allow us to do it until the paper work came through. The EA is not the fastest org in the world however they allowed us 'retro fit ' our practices to the new ruling. We are very proud of leading the pack in the UK and have taken this to new levels with over 1000 composting loos at Glastonbury in 2014.

We also have our brand new super flat packing loos that can fit 180 in a 40 ft container. These new loos can be set up with no or minimal tools at a rate of 20 per hour for a three to four person team..

We are always moving in terms of scale and so we have already developed a system to deal with large scale mass deposits. Our next development will be in line filters using bio char and reed beds for in situ liquid use.

2015 will see us across Europe in Germany, France, Croatia, POland and Malta! viva la revolootion.

cheers,

Hamish Skermer

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  • SusannahSoilet
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Re: Festival toilets

Hello Enno!

Good to see you are working with Hamish who we had the pleasure of meeting for an evening a few years ago.

Are the German authorities permitting the vermicomposted waste from the Natural Event installations to be used on agricultural land? And if so, after what time scale and subject to any checks for pathogens?

As I recall, Hamish had clearance as to the safety of the system from the regulatory authorities in Victoria, Aus, but was facing obstacles from the UK/ EU ones. I would be delighted to learn that these had been overcome!

Susi Batstone
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  • ennoschroeder
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Re: Festival toilets

Hi everyone,
I just want to add to your (Jürgen) initial question of this thread that since this year there is another start-up getting active in mobile composting loos on festivals - Natural Event Germany.
The name tells it: We are connected with Hamish Skermer's Natural Event and use the same toilet design.
Our concept is simple: Give people good and sustainable toilets and mix this with humour, art, music and education/awareness raising.
Despite being our first season we were able to be present on various events and festivals (e.g. Altonale, Habitat, M'era Luna, Highfield, Dockville and Freifeld) - and it is just amazing how good the feedback from both the users and organisers is - we did not anticipate this.
However, there is still quite some work to do in terms of convincing festival organisers to move away from the accepted state of the art = stinky portable loo.

If you are interested to see what we are doing please visit www.facebook.com/naturaleventdeutschland

There is also another thing which I would like to communicate here:

We are currently taking part in the SOCIAL IMPACT START AWARD 2014 - an award for Social Start-Ups where we can win 5.000 € for the further development of our project.
Since we are the only toilet guys in this competition we would really like to show people how attractive sanitation can be ;-) So, if you like, vote for us: www.facebook.com/socialimpact.by.iqconsu...=app_515720611858523

All the best!
Cheers,
Enno
Enno Schroeder
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