The portable toilet is a monument to waste. It is a chemical-laden box where valuable nutrients are mixed, treated as hazardous, and trucked away. Wasted* PBC, a Burlington-based startup, looks at that box and sees a broken supply chain. The company has raised $7.5 million (estimated) to fix it by redesigning the porta-potty from the bowl up, turning human waste, primarily urine, into agricultural fertilizer [Business Insider, Jan 2023].
A toilet with a business model
Wasted*’s product is a service. The company designs, deploys, and services urine-diverting portable toilets. These are waterless, solar-ventilated units that separate liquid from solid waste at source, preserving the nutrient integrity of the urine [Forbes, Nov 2023]. The collected waste is then processed off-site into fertilizer and other agricultural inputs. The service is currently available in Burlington, Vermont, Boston, Cape Cod, and parts of northern Vermont like Milton and Williston [wasted.earth].
The financial wedge is straightforward. Instead of charging solely for waste removal, Wasted* aims to create a new revenue stream from the processed fertilizer. The company’s early beachhead includes a ‘Donation Station’ deployment at Stowe Mountain Resort, part of Vail Resorts' sustainability initiatives [wasted.earth].
The team betting on pee
The founding team of Alexandra Miles, Taylor Zehren, Thor Retzlaff, and Brophy Tyree brought this idea to a group of investors aligned with circular economy and social impact theses. The $5.7 million seed round was led by Collaborative Fund, with participation from Divergent Capital, Day One Ventures, Third Sphere, and others [Business Insider, Jan 2023].
| Founder | Role |
|---|---|
| Alexandra Miles | Co-founder & CEO [Business Insider, Jan 2023] |
| Taylor Zehren | Co-founder [Business Insider, Jan 2023] |
| Thor Retzlaff | Co-founder [Business Insider, Jan 2023] |
| Brophy Tyree | Co-founder [Forbes, Nov 2023] |
The logistics of liquid gold
The ambition is vast, but the path is paved with practical hurdles. The first is collection density. The second is processing. The third is market adoption. Convincing farmers to buy fertilizer derived from human waste involves overcoming deeply ingrained stigmas.
Wasted*’s initial focus on controlled environments like resorts and events is a smart way to manage these variables. The unanswered question is how the model stretches. Can it move from servicing ski slopes to servicing municipalities, where the real volume, and impact, lies?
For the math to work, the value of the recovered nutrients must outpace the cost of collection and processing. To win, Wasted* must prove its circular method can be cost-competitive with the Haber-Bosch process, the century-old, fossil-fuel-intensive industrial method that fixes nitrogen from the air to make most of the world’s fertilizer.