Potties with a Purpose

IF YOU’VE HAD the misfortune of using a portable toilet—on a remote trailhead or, God forbid, at a music festival—you probably didn’t spend too much time thinking about what was going on, you know, down there. But for Taylor Zehren ’16, co-founder and CEO of Wasted*, these toilets and their contents are the key to understanding our relationship to the natural world and our role in its preservation.

“Human waste is a topic we have a lot of taboos around,” she says. “But it’s a big part of our ecosystem, and a big part of how we as humans interact with and affect our environment.”

Rethinking the role of human waste is at the core of Wasted*, a Vermont-based climate tech startup co-founded in 2020 by Zehren, Thor Retzlaff, and Brophy Tyree. With a focus on sustainability and user-friendly design, Wasted* is rethinking sanitation through the creation of cutting-edge portable toilets that turn human waste into renewable resources. Thanks to a state-of-the-art separation system, these “Potties with a Purpose” collect and separate liquid from solid waste to create valuable, nutrient-rich fertilizers, full of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

“We have to think about human waste and metabolism as part of a larger ecosystem,” Zehren says. “It’s not just about toilets; it’s about thinking about our actions as part of a closed loop, and how to better minimize waste and maximize efficiency.”

A biology major and member of the Honors Program at University of Portland, Zehren was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship after graduation in 2016 and spent a year driving from her native Oregon to Argentina to complete an English Teaching Assistantship. She stayed in Argentina for two years after her scholarship ended and traveled extensively, exploring the backcountries of Patagonia, Nepal, Chile, and even the Arctic. It was during this travel that she and her companions were exposed to the magnitude of the human waste disposal crisis.

“Backcountry waste disposal is traditionally inefficient and bad for the ecosystem,” Zehren says. “It creates a lot of additional pollution and leaks into the surrounding environment. We all started thinking about how this system could be improved.”

According to Wasted*, the current portable sanitation infrastructure wastes 32 billion gallons of water a year. Over six billion gallons of human waste are treated unsustainably. In 2019, Zahren, Retzlaff, and Tyree founded Do Good Sh*t, a nonprofit focused on implementing waste management systems in remote outdoor recreation systems in Nepal and Chile. When COVID halted operations, the team used their newfound knowledge of human waste management, circular sanitation systems, and nutrient reclamation processes to found Wasted*. Since the company’s launch, Wasted* has provided portable toilets at hundreds of events, construction sites, festivals, and municipal buildings across the greater Boston, Burlington, and Cape Cod areas, and have contracted with big-name companies like Consigli and Skanska. Wasted* also offers off-grid portable toilet systems in rural recreational areas and solar-powered “VIPee” trailer rentals that provide a more luxurious, but still eco-friendly, bathroom experience. For those not on the East Coast, their website also sells bamboo toilet paper and a recycled slow-release fertilizer called WeeBloom. And they don’t plan to stop there. Zehren, who was recently named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in the Social Impact Category, is looking forward to expanding on the Wasted* mission in the years to come, all while remaining enthusiastic about the company’s core focus: protecting the vast and delicate ecosystems of the place we call home.