 Now I apologize everyone. I'm going to just go back one slide because we're recording this and we missed this particular Slide there we go. Everybody should be able to see the slide in front of them If you have any questions comments and recommendations for future topics and speakers Please contact the E4C team at webinars at engineeringforchange.org If you're following us on Twitter today, please join a conversation with our dedicated hashtag hashtag E4C webinars Now before we move on our two presenters, I'd like to tell you a bit about engineering for change E4C is a knowledge organization, digital platform and global community of more than 1 million engineers designers, development practitioners and social scientists who are leveraging technology to solve quality of life challenges based by underserved community Some of those challenges include access to clean water and sanitation, sustainable energy, improved agriculture and more We invite you to become a member. E4C membership is free and provides access to news and thought leaders Insights on hundreds of essential technologies in our solutions library, professional development resources and current opportunities such as jobs, funding calls, fellowships and more E4C members also receive exclusive invitations to online and regional events and access to resources aligned to their interests We invite you to visit our website to learn more and to sign up Now, given our focus today on sanitation, we want to highlight an example from the E4C solutions library One that you'll hear more about today from one of our speakers. What you see in front of you is Sanivations container based sanitation waste collection service entry You'll be able to explore entries like this as well as hundreds of other technologies explore information regarding manufacturing and delivering aspects Performance and use parameters research and standards associated with these particular technologies all for free as an E4C member Now Very important housekeeping items that we need to cover before we get started I welcome to all of you who are joining us from all around the world We like to make sure to practice with the zoom platform Likely you're quite familiar with zoom now given that everybody is largely online But now we would like to invite you all to share where you are from in the chat window. I'll get us started here Alright Please enter of where you are from. Let us know where you're coming from today We have folks from the UK from Denver from New York, New Jersey, Boston, Sweden Now Kenya, of course, Switzerland London. All right. Thank you Do kindly reserve the Q&A window for questions for the presenters Welcome to all of you from Haiti to the Netherlands for Collins to Brighton Wow, India. Welcome. Welcome everyone. We're so thrilled to see you If you don't see the chat window open, please do look for the icon that should be located at the bottom of your screen Which which has little chat window do use the Q&A window for questions for the presenters So we can keep those organized again. Welcome everyone. We have Folks from Saskatchewan is a first I see from Canada. I'm also Canadian. So welcome Saskatchewan. Please do put your Answers into the chat window We're thrilled to have you alright Answers continuing in very popular webinar today. All right so as I mentioned use the chat window to type in any comments concerns or anything you want to share with your fellow listeners and Any questions for the presenters? Please do add them to the Q&A window Now with that, I am so thrilled to introduce our speakers First and foremost Emily Woods who is the CEO and co-founder of Sanivation She has a master's degree from the University of California Berkeley in renewable energy and so creates innovation a social enterprise Based in Naivasha, Kenya focus on covering waste to value. You'll be hearing all about Sanivation today And next up we she's joined by mr. Eric Rodden Who is a project manager at Stantak with ten years of experience working on water sanitation projects in the United States and developing countries? He has served as a fecal sledge management expert I challenge all of you to say that ten times quickly on the IU wash program in Indonesia There's a deputy chief of party on the USAID water resources Irrigation and sanitation task order Eric has a environmental engineering master's degree from Stanford University So with that I'm going to just stop sharing and turn it over to Eric to share the deck with us Alright and over to you Emily Great. I'm so excited to see so many people wanting to join to talk about poop today Always really exciting to see people get as pumped about shit as I am So welcome today. We'll tap straight in. Thanks for the great intro as mentioned My name is Emily one of the co-founders of Sanivation Sanivation is a social enterprise based here in Kenya that focuses on How can we actually get sustainable models for waste treatment in East Africa? And I'm joined here today by Eric from STAN Tech and STAN Tech has partnered with us on how we can take our Models and ideas and actually make something tangible around it and we'll try not to talk too long today So we can have lots of times for questions. So today will be about three key things Because there are a lot of people on the call who may not work in poop every day We're going to talk a little bit about what's going on worldwide and what we call the sanitation crisis We're going to give the case study of specifically of our treatment plant here in Ivashic Kenya And what we've learned from it and what we're trying to scale and then through that going to be talking about some of the challenges and benefits When we talk about fecal sludge So first we're going to hear that term a lot not everyone knows fecal sludge refers to everything. That's non-suited So that is pit latrines and septic tanks primarily, but there are a lot of other options as well And a lot of people may not know But less than 10 percent of the fecal sludge is treated before it's dumped into the environment here in East Africa And so that poop isn't infecting soils water than getting into humans And so it's actually still a diary is a second leading cause of death for kids under five here in Kenya still Which is mind-blowing and a lot of that is just because it is so expensive. So developed worlds here in the West Have have you know flush toilets to sewers to wastewater treatment plants? Which is great, but very very expensive and so about $55 per person a year It makes it impossible in a lot of places And so what we're trying to do here at Sanvation is to change that around to be able to provide a solution That is not only financially cost-effective, but also environmentally friendly And so what we do is we actually take in equal sludge We combine it with agriculture waste and we convert it into a solid fuel that we then sell back to industries And so that funds that we get from actually selling a fuel because of that resource recovery Channeled back into help pay for the treatment of the plant and so through that circular economy approach We're actually able to partner with local governments to actually provide a solution that can fit for this And there's a lot of benefits to what we're doing Not only we were moving waste from the environment and helping with that side But the fuel that we're producing is actually much more environmentally friendly than a lot of the unsustainable Streets that are used here in Kenya and so for every ton of fuel that we produce and sell We're actually saving 22 trees from being cut down in Kenya and about two CO2 tons equivalent of being released into the atmosphere and so today we're going to talk Specifically about our treatment plant in Naivasha, which has kind of been our demonstration pilot plant And you can see a little bit of this picture today And so first a little bit about Naivasha Naivasha used to be a rural area. It's a couple hours north of Nairobi based on the lake Lake Naivasha Surrounded by mountains. It is absolutely beautiful. In fact, you might have seen it in the movie out of Africa Is actually filmed here in Naivasha But in the past couple of decades because of rose farming, there's been incredible Population growth and that urbanization has been very very rapid And so now we're at a population of almost half a million with the growth rate showing no signs of slowing down And so you can see the pipe water and sewer access is quite minimal And so a lot of the waste from this area is actually being channeled into that gorgeous lake And the lake is absolutely essential for for everything that happens here in Naivasha from the animals to to humans To all the industries and so it is very very important that we can find find a way to stop waste from being dumped into the lake And so to talk a little bit more about the solution that's here right now Turner of the air Thanks Emily So just to expand upon the problem a little bit more so in Naivasha in 1974 a wastewater treatment plant was Constructed and at the time it had the ability to treat a hundred percent of the population as time went on Emily had mentioned that the population has expanded and urbanization has put a strain on the sanitation crisis in Naivasha and so as that timeline expanded there was no additional treatment capacity built There was no new fecal sludge treatment facility and the sewer network wasn't really expanded So what you've created is a large gap in what isn't not being treated And so without the sewers being expanded what's happening is more people are storing fecal sludge or septage in these pit latrines or septic tanks at their house with no place really to effectively Send it to be treated. So you fast forward to today with the population as she said of 34 340,000 there's only 10% sewered coverage and it's important to note even the sewage that's heading to the wastewater treatment plant Isn't getting effectively treated before it's discharged So I do want to stress the importance of the the difference between wastewater and septic wastewater is is Quite a bit more dilute than septage. So what has happened in in Naivasha and is happening all over the world is Without a better treatment source the exhaustor trucks or desludging trucks are taking the fecal sludge from the households and Either emptying it directly into the environment or in this case into the headworks of the wastewater treatment facility And while the fecal sludge Currently only represents about 9% of the total inflow into the headworks because it's so much stronger and has so much solids It's actually Is over 90% of the plants solids loading and so the plant that was already at capacity now becomes Overloaded so if you look in the bottom right corner of my screen That's the final maturation pond which typically should be quite clear because that's what the final step before it's released into the environment and then really the effects are This basically untreated effluent flowing directly into Lake Naivasha, which is of course what we're trying to Solve to this project. So I'm going to turn it back to Emily to start to talk about some of the challenges We faced in the development of our treatment facility Thanks Eric Many people in this color engineers I myself graduated undergrad with mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and when I graduated from undergrad I thought that technical solutions would solve everything that that was the crux to really make a difference in the world and As an engineer, I think that's quite a common thought and I don't necessarily Disagree that technical solutions aren't important Well, as you can see here is that the challenges of actually finding a solution are Way beyond just the technical side and so one of the biggest things I've learned since graduating is that not only is the tech Imperative but how it fits in the much greater context and so today We're going to spend a little bit of time talking about these other challenges and then as well dive into the tech Which I think a lot of people are interested in and so to start us off I'll actually dive in a little bit about the status quo and behavior change so in Kenya Where it is lacking a lot of infrastructure The aspirational goal what everyone really wants is sewers and a lot of that is because they've seen it happen in the West And that's what they know is the best and that's what they want to happen but the reality is is that almost no utility Here in Kenya water and sanitation utility is meeting cost recovery In fact, most of them are less than 80% cost recovery even from running a water and sewerage utility And in best case scenario if Kenya gets all their international financing if they get all their develop development plans They think they can reach 40% of the urban population to be on sewers by 2030 And so the question that we constantly ask that our government partners and stakeholders here is what about that other? 60% right can we actually okay sewers are great and they have their place and purpose But what about everywhere else? What about the areas that will never be able to afford or not have water or not have energy needed to actually run situation and So what you see that diagram on the right there is a commonly known fecal sludge management diagram That shows kind of how it works if it's not sewers how it goes from toilets to containment to transport to treatment and then reuse or disposal And so we've been working a lot with governments and utilities here in Kenya on what is a business model that could actually work here and so Go ahead and go back a couple slides there. I'm still in the 5% So so we've been working with Nekuru County on this 5% water surcharge This idea that if those families that are on water Can we actually charge an additional 5% on the water bill and then have those funds ring funds to actually go to fecal sludge management? And so Sanivation has been partnering a lot to actually develop these business models And then actually even develop water different options as far as containment and collection that those funds could go to support To help more non sewered solutions And so we think about behavior change. It's really first helping people think beyond sewers and other options The next big challenge that we talk about a lot is this governments and regulation And if you've talked to anyone who's actually tried to implement any kind of large-scale infrastructure in East Africa they will tell you that this is a huge difficulty and Sanivation has been working here in Kenya since 2012 It's been taking most of this past decade just how to learn how to work with the government and the utility and the local stakeholders When we first started here in Kenya Non-sewered sanitation actually didn't really have a home. So the Ministry of Water did water and sewerage The Ministry of Energy would have done our fuels and the Ministry of Health actually did rural pit latrines But no one was doing urban non sewered and so that in itself was really difficult is learning how to navigate And one of the ways that we've done that in the bottom left corner You'll see our Publication we did of a city-wide inclusive sanitation plan Which is basically a way of getting all the stakeholders from all the different government utilities Government ministries and stakeholders to come together to agree on what the problem is and kind of different solutions And we found that to be the first step to really start navigating the difficulty of working within the governments And then the picture that you see there is actually from a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Naivasha treatment plant And you'll see not only myself and my co-founder there at the front But we're surrounded by all of our partners here And so we've actually signed an MOU with Naivasha and that includes the utility the county government Some representatives from the national government We've all come together to agree to work together towards the solution which is fantastic We're actually right now working on a 13-year public-private partnership contract Which is going to be very exciting and kind of fit into the scale-up plan that we'll be talking about and the diagram on the right If it looks complex and confusing That's because it is is we are trying to operate within the utilities within the mandates working with Design firms like stand tech and other local construction firms To fit it all together and this is a difficult model to navigate And we've actually learned a lot from the energy sector that has very similar project development setups between the different stakeholders So that's been a huge learning for us as well Then we'll talk about CAPEX and OPEX and I think this is really where Sanivation's bread and butter is Is actually designing financial models that are going to last And so on our pilot plant as I mentioned here in Naivasha we take in that fecal sludge We treat it so about 1500 meters cubes have been treated to date at the plant And then we concert it to these these You see there on the right and these are sold to industries and so we sold about 2000 tons in the past year and a half And through that funds we've actually proven to hit a 15 net margin on a fecal sludge treatment plant And that may not sound like a big deal That is a big deal very very few waste treatment Even wastewater treatment plants can actually hit those kind of margins And it's been amazing to prove this so much so that we wanted to figure out how we scale So how do we take that model now which serves about 10,000 people and scale it up 10x and actually serve 100,000 people And so we've been working on this model verifying the market verifying the supply chain Understanding all those numbers came together and we had this great idea for a four million dollar plant That would still hit this net margin be making almost two million dollars a year in revenue from sales of the fuel And that is where we really needed to use stand-tox help Because at this point to that kind of scale We needed support on the technical capacity. And so we actually released a request for proposals stand-tox applied and was selected and they were brought on as our technical expert to take that model and make it Much more of a tangible real design And so i'll give it over to eric now to dive into some of the tech tech details Thanks, Emily. Um, and yeah, I do want to stress that she said it absolutely perfectly like The setup and the planning and the governance regulation is really the hard part. And so i'm going to dive into The challenges that we faced on the technical side of it But just note that before we were able to get involved all of that legwork had to had to be done and it's it's it's really is impressive So as stand-tox what our goal was was to bring their pilot scale into a full-scale facility And I think the what that means to me the most is de-risking the project. So how do we identify? risks to the success and then either Engineer around it or if the risk is going to be there no matter what How do we develop backup plans and mitigate it and develop redundancies in our design to try to lower those risks as much as possible. So what we um, you know are bringing to the table as our fecal sludge management experience Our technical expertise in our process engineering And then also our ability to build capacity within organizations like Sanivation And the engineering community that we work with in kenya So just real quick about stand-tech and why we think we're qualified in this field We've been active in the fsm sector for you know over a decade. We've done some really cool the train design That are architecturally pleasing and we've helped scale from a few facilities to you know hundreds in ethiopia We've done techno economic comparisons between fsm models and sewer models, which is of course applicable to this project We co-offered the book on fecal sludge management funded by the gates foundation And then we've done some really fun work in indonesia with operator capacity building and technology selection workshops where we You know empower people to make the correct or the the the right decisions for their given constraints on the ground So, um, at a really high level like when we approach this project The first thing we did was how can we structure our team for success in this given situation? And so what we wanted to do is overall Control the project management and the design management of the process We want to own the process mechanical because that's how we develop the sizing of the equipment and the processes that we We need we also want to own civil because that's how you can control the material flowing across the site the traffic on the site How you can mitigate some flood measures? So those are things that really important to us and of course the quality But what we know we can't do better than the local engineers on the ground is understand the local codes permitting What a contractor actually expects to see in the field when they get out there to build something and so for that We partnered with a local engineering firm to Can do the structural engineering electrical engineering geotech, which will get to Its importance in a little bit cost estimating and permitting and then in addition to that we really Wanted to contact the local vendors and equipment suppliers to see what's available locally And what we can have to try to solicit from abroad and what we can build within the context of Kenya So our goal of course is to select the right technology and the right processes for this given situation And just to kind of go through a couple of the puzzle pieces here that we're working through One is the operators capabilities and preferences So what does sanitation want and what can they handle and because they're a highly skilled team that values continuing Education and capacity building we were really confident that they could handle pretty high tech solutions And so in this project we really didn't shy away from it as you'll see Additionally, they had some pretty strict capex and opex constraints to make sure they fit within their financial model So from the very beginning when we're feeding them cost information We're feeding that risk into it too to say, hey, you know, we're really scared about this part of the project So we're going to carry high costs from the beginning to ensure that they understand Any of the risks of their their business model and then finally what are our our final goals here? So we had to meet Kenyon's really strict effluent Standards to make sure we're discharging into the lake is of really good quality And then additionally what's important to the end user of the briquettes So we need to make sure we're producing really consistent and strong briquettes with with the same clarific value So what I just described to the end is really our end requirements, right? It's the it's the client briquettes requirements and the effluent But in addition to that like where are we starting? And so we worked this innovation to do a whole bunch of sampling of what we believe the fecal sludge Coming into their facility is going to be real. They also did a whole bunch of drying tests on the biosolids and the biomass or the sawdust that they were purchasing And some Flucculation tests to see how much polymer is required potentially when the facility is Finish construction and what all of that combines to is the design criteria And once we've developed that that enables us to really go out into the market and discuss the project with vendors and equipment suppliers To determine what we think the right solutions are for this project Um, one thing we found out really early on from renovations relationships with their customers Is that they're willing to pay a premium for a consistent supply. So in the naivasha There's two rainy seasons that make it quite hard to supply and get Good biomass to be burning in these fuel in these furnaces and boilers So what they heard from the market was that if if they would pay a premium in order to secure a consistent supply throughout the year So knowing that from the beginning that factored a lot into our design and the size of the facility we needed And we were kind of left with the choice Do you store a lot at the very beginning of the process with the raw biomass? Which is really bulky, but it doesn't really require a lot of You know structures or buildings to keep it safe Or do you store it at the very end where you have a briquette? Which is a finished product and has quite a bit of value And it's really dense so you can store it in a smaller area But it's going to require a roof on it and of course you have the risks associated with what if you ruined that product So that became a really big Exercise was to try to analyze this situation and see what was right for their facility And additionally, uh, how are we going to actually package that and ship those products to the client was really important to Another analysis we did was try to balance between reliability and affordability So of course our goal is to have this facility never go down And never is really not an option right things are always going to go wrong And you can engineer and put as much equipment in there as possible But something still could happen and then in order to really make the project affordable at some point you have to make Realizations that some things are going to go down. How do you plan around that? So this is just kind of a graphical You know representation of some of the things we did So do you watering equipment is what's going to be taking that septage and separating the effluent from the biomass that then is Going to be turned into the briquette or the biosolids And so what we said was you know, this equipment is really reliable Like it doesn't break down very frequently, but it is pretty high tech So when it does break down It might not be fixed in an hour And because they can't really stop running that because we agreed with Niva was the wastewater treatment plant operators That we would continually treat septage You know throughout the week that we couldn't afford that risk And it's a really critical piece of equipment as I described. So we really needed two of them to be able to Have one down for maintenance But then we can look at something else like the flock a reactor and what that is it's introducing polymer into The fecal sludge and it helps create these flocks that makes it really easy to To break and pull apart from the water And so similarly like this is a really reliable process It's a little bit of a Dumber piece of the equipment and it can be repaired quite easily, but it's still really critical But when we look at that that seems like a pretty easy place that you know If it goes down it's going to be down for a very short period of time and we can work around that And so you're able to save some money by deciding you only need one of those pieces of equipment Um another big topic as I mentioned is the seasonal flooding in the area So how do they how do we secure the investment in this equipment and make sure that it's always Able to run and not being damaged. So um to the top that top right here You can see that's a nivasha town and it's pretty hilly actually And so during the rainy season those yellow arrows are representing a sheet flow that comes across the site And to make matters a bit worse the wastewater treatment plants to the top of the page actually overflow raw sludge into the site location shown in blue there During parts of the year and so this is you know A pretty messy issue that we don't want to have to deal with and so immediately early on the project We lobbied to the government to say, you know, can can this be intercepted along one of the main roads and then funneled into an existing, uh, you know Ditch that doesn't really have much traffic instead of having us to deal with it So they did say that they're going to take on that task, but knowing that that risk is so large We still ended up trying to raise our site to keep our critical equipment safe during the rainy season And also have some some ditches and canals to to spread the water But we're still relying on the government for that primary diversion Land disputes inside constraints. I can't stress this enough This is something that's going to happen on every project no matter how hard you try And it was no no different here Niva was again is the is the plant operator to the north of us and you know, rightfully So they're afraid that what if they give away all of their land? And then they want to expand their process And so they were a little bit scared to give it away Compounding matters is that we weren't really sure who owned the land either and I don't think they did So it made the whole thing pretty complicated But we were on a schedule an aggressive schedule And so what we did to really mitigate this risk is focus really on the process design Let's select our equipment Let's see how big things are going to be and know roughly what the footprint is going to be And hold off as long as possible to put things into CAD and layout that site So we did a whole bunch of hand sketching Um, and we modified the site layout. I think three times But as I said, we kept it out of CAD and tried to reduce rework as much as possible Um, and so kind of the outcome of this was we proactively engaged Niva was to explain As I mentioned at the very beginning of this presentation is that that fecal sludge entering your treatment facility is really Overloading it and causing your effluent to be bad. So we're part of your solution Let us build this facility and then we will help you on your effluent quality by removing that solids loading And you know, that really did the trick. Um, and so we were eventually, you know, granted the land You see before us and uh, you know, it's not exactly perfect how we would want it to lay out But it's it's it's quite good. It's compact and it has a nice ring road on it. So we're quite happy Um, and then another big issue as I mentioned at the beginning is the geotech And so we knew there was poor soil conditions in this area Um, and there's an expansive clays which are notoriously bad for foundations So right away we launched really early geotechnical investigations We hired a local engineer who knows this soil type well to help us and then in addition to that to make us feel even better We did some additional interpretation to ensure That we were comfortable with what the outcomes were And one of the reasons why we knew this was a problem was that in the pilot facility You could see quite a lot of the foundations were cracking prematurely Which which of course is not good and it's not something that we're willing to accept for the full-scale facility Um, and also just to note that at the very beginning we highlighted this risk and carried very high foundation costs throughout the project And the hope of course is that you're able to release that risk when you found out your building and the perfect soil conditions and everything's great But that didn't happen and we did have to design pretty serious foundational structures to Ensure that, uh, you know, everything goes well And one other point here, um, because it's another common issue is a lot of dream facilities are near lakes or rivers And that equals or not always but quite often high water table And so, you know, we have these really big tanks and when those are empty the high water table actually creates a buoyant force It can uplift the foundation and crack it Um, and so you have to you have to design around that and so in this case We had even more expensive foundations with this really big toe on the bottom So, okay, that was a lot of information real fast. I hope everyone got most of it And um, but what I want to do just really quick before we get to the questions is just do a quick project recap Um, so our goal with this project and with Santa renovations vision is to improve sanitation in east Africa And the method that we're doing this is a sustainable business model through resource recovery Which enables their operations and to of course to have us come in and design this facility And um, if we were to try to summarize the keys to the successful implementation I would say it's integrating international best practices and local knowledge Taking all these lessons learned from projects around the world and applying it to the people that know best The situation best on the ground and then early and constant stakeholder engagement and building strong relationships This project would never have happened if innovation didn't have a decade on the ground Building these really strong relationships and being able to convince everyone of the value of this project Um, and with that, you know, thank you for your time and we want to open it up for some questions Thank you so much. Eric and Emily. This is excellent. We have questions coming in already. So i'm really Thrilled that people are really keen. Um, one question that came in and just in case anybody else needs the answer to this Was definition of capex and opex capex is capital expenditure. Opex is operating expenditure So, uh, one of the questions that came in close to our heart at engineering for change because we we are really Jazzed about things like standards because we're engineers So one question came in is that you end up designing the foundations to yes us or kenyan design codes We used uk standards Which are kenyan standards for the most part because a lot of The the standards went down that way. So that stands like we're lucky enough that we're a global company And so we actually use quite a bit of uk Engineers to help support us because in the us. We also don't use the metric system as much So a lot of basic things like that where it was really helpful to have our uk guys involved Maybe we can all dream that eventually the metric system will get here, but you know As a canadian i'm also tend to be for the metric system My number one answer when people ask why'd you move to kenya? That's a great motivator So this one I think is a little bit more for Both of you to tackle but definitely emily. I think you likely can have a perspective on this What specific actions we're taking to address behavior change if the people wanted sewers What was done to get the people from that desire to To acceptions of people such management Yeah, I would say that it's not done yet It's a continual and forever process and and definitely not done just by us You know, it's been an incredible movement of us with NGOs with the world bank of really just sitting down And I think when you ask about what's been done education has been a huge one of just enlightening ministers You know, there's always that interesting gap between The ivory tower and public policy and so a lot has been trying to just education And then there's been a lot of pr Whether that's uh recently in kenya There's been these incredible newspaper articles about the corridor of disease And talking about these rivers and lakes in kenya that are so polluted And and that has rowed people up, you know, and and it's through that anger and we saw it in the states Um once silent spring was produced in the late 1960s, right suddenly the people said enough is enough We got to fix this and and so I think the combination of of educating and then rallying public Request to do more to do something more has been key, but it's definitely not over There's amazing NGOs that are constantly producing Great materials that we can use better selling points And then needs of technology gets better and better. It becomes more and more of a logical decision as well Lovely and this is actually dovetails really nice scene to that. So one one listener really wants to know um Can you tell us about how the solution ties into the future expansion of the sanitation system by the government? And perhaps uh, if you can build on that are considering perhaps other geographies in some way talking to other governments of neighboring countries or districts Can you can you speak to that? Yes, we look to the future planning. Um, I would encourage anyone to go look at community wide inclusive sanitation plans c wisp And it's an incredible process that we did not develop that we're following on that world banks been advocating for that helps bring everyone together and look at the entire city and say hey Here's where we're going to have sewers. Here's where they can expand in the next 10 years Here's every other person where they live. What are we going to do for them? And so it creates this 20 year plan that looks at the entire community And so as we look into how we fit into the future plans We really see utilizing that tool more and more to be able to To master plans include not only the sewerage and pipe water plan But also the non sewer plan and I think that's going to be key to actually getting citywide solutions And as to our geographic location, we're already talking with multiple different areas around here in Kenya We're starting to look around east africa And and and every now and then getting interests from other parts in the world. Obviously, this is our home base. So it's easier, but We're very interested to talk Anywhere, you know, as eric mentions dantex international. I'm sure we could use them to help piggyback us to another area Well, the audience is very international. So you might get some interest after this eric. Do you want to add to that? Yeah, I was going to add one thing too is that um on like this specific design we did Throw in extra capacity. So for instance, I think Niva was that they treat like 140 meters cube per day that's going through their facility and our system's designed for 300 So we actually do have a lot of capacity within the existing design to take on new users Okay, um, I think that's Absolutely key. I just want to like eric is spot on, you know, one of the biggest challenges We didn't talk about with fecal sludge treatment plans and waste treatment in general is with rapidly growing populations How to account for that how to account for a wide range of different types of fecal sludge that might be coming in And I think that is something that was done really well with this design of being open to whatever the next 10 20 years brings Exactly. That's so interesting. So there's actually quite a few questions here regarding the treatment. So One question specifically on what chemicals did you use for sewage treatment and are there any side effects? Um, I'm not sure I completely understand the question, but um, so there's really only a couple chemicals that we're using One is polymer, which is to create the flocks and the dewatering And then we're using an activated sludge plant, which is done by a local engineering firm in Kenya called CESP They've been awesome to work with And so at the end of that we're introducing chlorine for disinfectant. Um, so that that's kind of the only other added chemical Okay And somebody else sludge side Because people ask how we treat the sludge What's really neat about our process of in the process of making our fuel We're actually treating the solids within that for cutting process. So it creates a very cohesive approach Yeah, the heat will kill all the pathogens in it through the drying process And then the effluent is being treated as I said from this activated sludge plant Um, piggybacking on that someone had a very specific question regarding the recovery of the polymer waste. Is that a factor in this process? Uh, we're not factoring in it now. Yeah, okay. Um on the note of for kets though. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I'm Lee. Yes Oh, we've just also found a new local polymer producer. Eric. I haven't even told you this We're breaking your costs by like 75 on polymer, which is really awesome. That's gonna help the financial model even more Yeah, uh, you guys heard it here first Invest now So one on the note of briquettes of some really interesting questions on briquettes Is the sawdust a sustainable source? And can the sludge be made into briquettes without the sawdust? So basically someone's really curious if there's a substitute for the sawdust Yeah, so the sawdust is a current agriculture residue that we've chosen to use um, so most of our sawdust comes from um sustainable wood harvesting or the leftover at mills Um, and so it is one agriculture residue that we could use in kenya, but there's many others You know, the gas is really common from the sugar industry. There's a lot of coconut husk and holes There's rice husks It kind of depends on where your factory is built to be able to do the analysis on the supply chain And I'll be honest By far one of the biggest risks when we look at scaling replicating is in an informal supply chain How do we guarantee that supply and it's it's still a big risk that we're going to continue to Pursue and and understand and try to get more and more control over which has been exciting. Um The second part of that question was Can we make briquettes without You can't so dry fecal sludge has a calorific value very similar to a lot of what so you can't Problem is is that fecal sludge has a very very low total solids content And so the amount that we're actually pooping solid mass per day Is incredibly little and it's hard to generate enough revenue from making that into a final product and selling it To hit the margins that we're trying to hit for the plant so that we can have replicability Um, we're going to continue to explore that to explore What are other additional feedstocks that we can look at? You know, maybe that solid waste trash from cities that could be incorporated Um, maybe there's just more ways of getting more fecal sludge out of a community so that we have enough So stay tuned definitely something that we'll keep working at Great, and actually I think related to that one of the questions you related related to the calorific value compared to between coal and the briquettes And I guess I'm not sure if you could speak to you know, how these varied feedstocks might impact that calorific value Absolutely Yeah, I was gonna say I mean we're not going to be able to compare it to coal just because it is a different fuel source completely But and Emily, I bet you you might have this on the top of your head, but like how what percentage of Kenyans are using like woody biomass for a fuel. It's quite high Oh, yeah a recent study showed that 90 percent of Kenya residents are using charcoal at least on a daily basis And a charcoal or firewood solid fuels But our biggest customer has actually we we focus on the industries And these are industries who are using anywhere from 100 to 5000 tons of firewood a month to run their boilers And so the demand for for solid fuels in Kenya is astronomically high And I don't necessarily think that's fully unique, you know You look at Europe where the pellet market is also incredibly high in America ships billions of tons a year of pellets To Europe to use there. And so the market is there for solid fuels That's actually that answers I think the question that somebody else had regarding consumers And whether how consumers are responding to these briquettes, whether there's acceptance from Do you see a major difference between industrial consumers versus individuals? The biggest that we see is the the path to scale If you're trying to sell to households, then it becomes a distribution That's a challenge, right is being able to reach each and every household that only buys one kg a day As opposed to when you're dealing with these customers, you have a single customer who could buy 100 of everything we can produce no matter how big we go So we found that has been really key as we look to scaling is focusing on those industrial customers I would love to figure out how to do the logistics and distribution to reach all the households as well But that would take partnering with a company who does that full-time Exactly and that note one of the questions was related to the environmental friendliness of the during the burning process So when you have these industrial clients who are powering boilers Are there any environmental concerns they need to address? in the burning process Yes, so most of these large-scale industrial boilers have a pretty clean burn when it comes to natural carbons Not saying it's the best in the world and I would recommend it everywhere, but that is what they're using now And so we've also found really important if you really want to create a sustainable business model It's hard to create a new market. And so we found by plugging into a very large existing Market as has really been important to to be able to to sell poop from on it And um, what I was gonna say probably just to add to that too I mean we are reusing this biomass right like a lot of it's coming either from septage or from you know scrap wood Like we're not uh, it's not from uh, you know harvesting directly or anything like that And then you know as the facility is built, um, you know Innovations buying power will increase and like we know that um sustainable practices is a focus of theirs So by nature of using their product that Industrial client is going to be using a better fuel source as well Um, so Eric as as we're talking about the construction There were some questions here that came in regarding the timing of the construction. When do you expect? to have the plant in production Um, I I'm not sure exactly what the kickoff time is yet. We just um recently finished the design So there is quite a lot of work that has to get done in terms of um reaching out to the construction market and moving that way And then on the note of the construction site, uh, were you close to changing the site location because of ownership and groundwater? How many times And another great benefit of partnering with the government again talking about like the need of local stakeholder buy-in Is is that land was given to us, right? It might have changed three times and first given before it was actually owned by the utility But all that was figured out because of our government partners and because of their buy-in and our solution And so that land was is free for us to use under this ppp contract that we're signing Which is really exciting and and yes, while there's probably better land out there It's really hard to compete with free Well, and not not to mention, um, you know speaking of behavior change earlier You know the the truck drivers themselves trying to incentivize them to go to a new facility can be quite difficult at times a lot of times These facilities can get built and then they never even receive any fecal sludge because they haven't been able to reach into the market Whereas currently the trucks are already going to nabby wasp and nabby wasp doesn't want them there So it's literally just pointing that way and say go another 15 feet and you'll be at where you need to be So that's a really a great added benefit to the site location It's good to know. I'm I'm not sure if you'll be able to disclose this, but there is a very, uh Direct question about the capex here. How much money is required as initial investment? And why you answered some of this already? Why nabasha and gala? Um, happy to say this is plant was designed at a four million dollar capex That dollar value was picked and based off of size of people that were serving similar infrastructure And what would get us to that op-ex margin, you know to be honest like they play with each other side by side um, and so Those funds, you know as sanivation grows and scales, uh, we really seek to use public funding for that as a public good as waste treatment And so working with the government to secure those kind of capex financing why nabasha and because When I came to nabasha in 2012 I fell in love So I've been here ever since we've developed an incredible relationship with the government and the utility here They've asked for this. They want this they're willing to do the work to make it happen Which makes it ideal. There are definitely other areas out there that are in a similar situation We were starting to talk with them and those those are the cities that we want to work with The ones where the local utility and the local government says we need this. Let's figure this out together Um, and that's I think really driving where we will scale from here That makes good sense one question related to getting those funds and you've answered part of this is Have you considered or have you engaged in the impact investors? Or managed to leverage any additional finance beyond what you've received thus far or that you've commented on thus far Yes, um, so sanivation We are working on securing a c2 round right now Um, we'll be aiming for a series a in a year from now. So if there's any investors on the calls obviously reach out Um, we don't want to use that funding for a project, you know in the project development Set up we want to keep those kind of separate and so those funds are running our hq Which is doing the rnd which is developing these new situations. Who's who's who's creating these new partnerships? Um, and and so those funds are much more for that where our project development funds will be separate Where it will also probably be a blended finance model I got it and um, can you comment about and lots of people have questions about these various stakeholders and engaging partners and effective ppp's for all has a person purposes this person asked which stakeholders were the hardest to uh Engage or join the cooperation If you could speak to that the laughter maybe says a lot here Oh, it's it's um, I think anytime you're working on a more complex sales model The most difficult part is finding out who the decision maker is Because in a lot of these scenarios the decision maker is not one person It's multiple people and it's multiple people together And so while I'd say that there's not one stakeholder that I say is difficult I think the difficulty is multiple stakeholders together Right, we've got to get the funding in place the government partner in place We've got to get our technical capacity in place. We've got all these different pieces that need to work together Um, and that's common in a lot of project development and a lot of complex sales But it is difficult to navigate and a much longer sales timeline of course and I guess This is a very interesting kind of business vision and and operations question is How did you know how it's innovation? No, it was time to launch such a big project after we're kicking Kenya for 10 years I would have loved to launch it ages ago The need is incredibly strong and only growing And and we're hearing more and more not only the need but like the the want the hunger from governments and the utilities for something better And and so why now is I'm sorry. It wasn't sooner Right, this is it should have been sooner. We've had to work to this I think verifying our model at the pilot scale has been huge It's given not only the financial model Verifying the assumptions But also now has been a place a tangible place that we can bring these partners and government people to to see it You know, sometimes people need to see it to believe it And so I think Everything's pointing in the right direction now to start scaling this up. I'm very very excited lovely and um Question more for Eric. Um, and we're talking about, you know, co-design engaging You know, various local firms you mentioned that specifically in your presentation This listener wants to know, um, if you can comment on the extent to which your firms engage those local engineering firms to co-design the resulting plant And, um, you know, if you can maybe even speak to the, you know, how you do that and and how maybe you see engaging them moving forward Yeah, absolutely. Um so I mean in in general engineers and Working in developing countries like our goals to work ourselves out of the job And you know, that's what we're trying to do here. So I think, um, you know Emily was in Incentivation was willing to bring us on board because the success of this first facility is so so important to to themselves and to naivasha Um, but moving forward, uh with the next implementation. Our goal is to reduce our role considerably we want to stay on in Like review roles and ensuring that we are doing some of the process mechanical because again, I think that's the most critical piece of the puzzle here, um But you know, the the firm we worked with had never done fecal sludge before and so we do have a role to play in in that But now that they've gotten a taste of it and they've experienced in it, you know We believe the other the firm for the next one can take a much greater role And interestingly kind of a flip side to that question another user asked About in terms of working with local entities What do you recommend not to do? Oh Um, I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah. Yeah. Um I don't I don't have a good answer. I'll have to think about that one Uh, and jet maybe I'm Emily. I don't know if you can tackle that in terms of just Developing relationships, you know, we talk about what's important about partnerships. What what do you think is and not to do No, it's um, gosh, that is a really it's a difficult curveball there what not to do. Um I think always ensuring that you're not the one always talking Um, you know the age old rule of listen more than you than you talk I think it's actually really important because when you start to listen you understand what their barriers are And it's not that they're saying no and it's not that they're saying change it Is that they're just still trying to fully process it? So I think that's been a big piece of it. Um, I think Unlike also get age old of always people want to know what's in it for them And so a lot of engineers try and use a logical decision-making process Um to to to reach people and it was described to me very easily They're like Emily you're making a very valid logical argument here, but the government is a non-logical actor Right and and it is great to think about that. So so what not to do is is is remember who you're working with And and how they need the information and how to tailor it to them. I think is really important Amazing So, uh, we're coming up to the end of our webinar and I I'm just I'm amazed at the number of questions that have come in And I I don't think we're going to be able to address all of these But I do want everyone to know that we will pass on some of these questions to our presenters and Please um, we do have a article that we published About innovation where you can also add your questions. We'll be happy to share that in the follow-up one very specific Ultra specific question for Emily that I thought was kind of interesting. So I'm gonna throw it out at you What happens if the briquettes are restored poorly by vendors, especially the briquettes we absorb water Sorry, I missed the question. Uh, I closed down on me real quick for us. Oh, yeah, no worries. What happens Um, if the briquettes are stored poorly by vendors Or just poorly in general by the user and user, especially if the briquettes reabsorb water somehow Oh, whoever asked this knows their stuff Water soluble, so it is bad when our briquettes get wet they break down And even if they've redry they've lost their density and they've lost a lot of the qualities that's in them And so Eric was mentioning how important like our storage is and a lot of it is around not getting it wet Um, even biomass, you know the the agriculture waste that we get when it gets wet It's so difficult to dry it and so it is really really important to transport and storage So whoever asked this question, you're right poop is water soluble and and a downfall of our solid fuels Yeah, and maybe just one added point there too on the supply chain Like we were looking into well, why don't we just store it at the client's site because they have room already for it But then you kind of look at some of the photos and it's underneath a, you know A greenhouse that's roof isn't great And then if they're not going to really purchase it until they use it That risk becomes quite large for for our team. Um, and so that's why we decided to store It just at our facility Thank you for that. So excellent Answers, thank you so much To our presenters today. I I I am so grateful for You taking the time to join us Um, I I am apologetic to all of our listeners whose questions we weren't able to address You'll see on the slide right now that we have our Email here for you to follow up with us Emily and Eric. I do want to also draw your attention to the chat There are some offers of partnership there already So it's it looks like it's the beginning of some beautiful friendships for you all With that in mind, I'd like to thank you all of our listeners. I'd like to again. Thank you our presenters We will be Sending out our recording information for those of you who are interested and for those of you when I Stay connected to us and hear about more exciting webinars such as this one Don't forget to become an E4C member to get invitations directly. So with that Good morning. Good afternoon or good evening everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day And we'll see you on the next engineering for change webinar. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye