About us

At the end of his studies, Philippe was given the opportunity to do a piece of work on urban sanitation planning in a city in Togo. There was no sewerage network there. The passion for decentralized sanitation has not left him, from the development context to humanitarian aid. The different realities were striking: institutional barriers, the level of commitment of the authorities, and the reality of a city where hundreds of micro-treatment plants stand side by side. For Philippe, it’s clear: governance matters! He sees VaLoo as a bunch of enthusiastic and committed people ready to take circular wastewater management to a new level.

As a student, Vincent landed in the field of sustainable sanitation through an internship at the architecture firm atba and the housing cooperative Equilibre. He was curious to learn more about circular sanitation systems, a marginalized field but full of positive aspects (environmental, economic, and social). Vincent transported tons of urine, excrement and dry toilets throughout western Switzerland, which led to some unusual encounters. He wants to understand the psychological barriers associated with the topic in order to break social taboos and make the toilet a cool topic!

In 2010, Jonas helped plant over 100 trees in a permaculture project, which were fertilized with the best compost from the toilet. That day, he decided to commit to contributing to putting those nutrients back into the loop. Kompotoi has built more than 700 mobile composting toilets, which operate year-round or during the summer. Ever since he started Kompotoi in 2012, he has been thinking about forming an association with other organizations. Now Jonas is more than happy that we could found such a broad-based association.

When she heard about pollution and forest dieback in elementary school, she started inventing a machine that sucks in bad air, compresses it and releases good air. Later, wastewater treatment and circular economy became her favorite topics of her work, her dissertation at Eawag and her involvement as a member of the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSaNa) core group since 2010. Today, direct air capture is a commercial technology available worldwide. Dorothee herself is still working on concepts to reduce wastewater and close nutrient cycles. Dorothee wants to support VaLoo in becoming a nationwide network, without forgetting any stakeholder.

When Kai agreed to do a dissertation on urine source separation a good 25 years ago, the idea was completely new and surprising to him. During his work on “separation at the source”, he was able to work with very motivated and committed people, whether in research or practice. Particularly important to him are the Vuna project, which gave rise to the spinoff company of the same name, and the Blue Diversion Autarky project, in which teams were able to realize the ideas of wastewater separation and resource recovery for a toilet block. Kai believes that VaLoo provides us with a platform to discuss ideas and build foundations to implement sustainable concepts. With his involvement in VaLoo, Kai wants to help making the idea of resource recovery in the bowl socially acceptable.

Reto’s career in finance has allowed him to travel internationally and learn a lot about different cultures and approaches to life. His strength is to combine long-term visions with short-term actions. Having been involved in several circular economy companies as the founder of Consulting for Impact, he found VaLoo’s mission extremely important and wanted to contribute. He was also intrigued by the composition of the board with university professors, researchers and entrepreneurs. Reto’s goal is to make the approach of circular sanitation systems better known in Swiss economic communities.

When Kayla became active in a housing cooperative in Geneva, her learning curve about wastewater problems and sustainable solutions to overcome them was steep. Kayla did her master’s project on a worm filter for wastewater treatment of for the housing cooperative Equilibre (2017) and became a founding member of aneco (2020). Aneco is an association dedicated to recovering the resources present in our wastewater through decentralized and sustainable treatment. Kayla played a key role in organizing VaLoo’s first General Assembly and is excited about the momentum generated by the co-creative power of its members. She strongly believes in VaLoo’s mission to enable innovative and sustainable solutions for circular sanitation systems in Switzerland.

When he was a kid building cabins in the forest, he always wanted to build the toilets first. Later, in 2015, after several years at Eawag, he founded Vuna, which builds circular sanitation systems in Switzerland and beyond. Vuna has licensed Aurin, the world’s first fertilizer made from urine. Bastian finds it exciting to be one of 44 people who founded VaLoo. As sanitation systems grow, VaLoo gives some structure and visibility to this diverse group of players. Bastian wants to strengthen the network between professionals, the construction industry, the authorities, in the different language regions of Switzerland and across borders.