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]. It is a bet that the most circular of economies starts in the last place most people want to think about.
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. For now, the customer is anyone who rents portable toilets: event organizers, construction sites, and venues with sustainability mandates. 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, potentially altering the unit economics of sanitation. The company’s early beachhead includes a ‘Donation Station’ deployment at Stowe Mountain Resort, part of Vail Resorts' sustainability initiatives [wasted.earth]. It is a classic climate tech playbook: take a costly, linear process (collect, chemically treat, dispose) and make it circular (collect, refine, sell).
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]. The backgrounds point toward mission-driven operation rather than traditional hardware scaling.
- Circular focus. Co-founder Thor Retzlaff has publicly framed urine not as waste but as a “raw feedstock” or a “reverse mine,” a succinct summary of the company’s core philosophy [LinkedIn].
- Sanitation entrepreneurship. Alexandra Miles is described in profiles as a sanitation and circular economy entrepreneur, a niche that matches the problem space [Dealroom].
- Impact capital. The investor list leans heavily into funds known for backing public benefit corporations and environmental solutions, suggesting patience for the long regulatory and behavioral pathways ahead.
| 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. Portable toilets at a weekend festival are one thing; creating a dense, reliable feedstock stream for fertilizer production year-round is another. The second is processing. Turning urine into a stable, standardized, and regulation-compliant agricultural product is a chemical engineering challenge distinct from building a better toilet. The third, and perhaps tallest, is market adoption. Convincing farmers to buy fertilizer derived from human waste involves overcoming deeply ingrained stigmas, regardless of the nutrient profile.
Wasted*’s initial focus on controlled environments like resorts and events is a smart way to manage these variables. It creates a closed-loop narrative for sustainability-minded partners and simplifies logistics. 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. A back-of-the-envelope calculation: an average adult produces about 500 liters of urine per year, containing roughly 4 kilograms of nitrogen, a key fertilizer component. If Wasted* can service a population equivalent of 10,000 people at an event, that’s a potential 40,000 kg of nitrogen captured in a short period, offsetting a meaningful amount of synthetic fertilizer production. The company’ ultimate competitor isn’t another toilet company. It’s 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. To win, Wasted* must prove its circular method can be cost-competitive with that entrenched, subsidized incumbent.
Sources
- [Business Insider, Jan 2023] This startup turning human waste into fertilizer just raised $7.5 million | https://www.businessinsider.com/wasted-7-million-pee-poop-fertilizer-collaborative-fund-pitch-deck-2023-1
- [wasted.earth] Wasted.earth | https://wasted.earth
- [Forbes, Nov 2023] Under 30 2024 Social Impact: Meet The Young Leaders Building Sustainable Businesses And A More Just World | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/11/28/under-30-2024-social-impact-meet-the-young-leaders-building-sustainable-businesses-and-a-more-just-world/
- [LinkedIn] Thor Retzlaff - wasted* | https://www.linkedin.com/in/thor-retzlaff/
- [Dealroom] Wasted Earth Company Profile | https://app.dealroom.co/companies/wasted_