For over 10 years there has been a demand in France for waterless and also odourless toilets that are easy to maintain and clean: basically, a demand for “dry toilets “.
This demand was 1st expressed by mountain refuge managers, but also by ski resort managers, the aim being to equip ski slopes and the tops of ski lifts.
Hence, Ecosphere first worked with the Club Alpin Français (The Parmelan Mountain Refuge ; Carro Refuge) and with ski resorts (we’ve been setting up dry toilets at the summit of l’Aiguille du midi to Chamonix : 12 dry toilets at a height of 3842 meters since as early as 1995).
At the start of the 90’s, the available technologies on the market, which mostly originated from Scandinavia, were extremely simple and not very accomplished: a tank in which the faecal matter was constantly being sprayed by urine. This generated a lot of odours, an outburst of flies in summer and finally the obligation to evacuate the faecal matter saturated by the urine is extremely “repulsive”.
Since its creation in 1991, Ecospheres Technologies has undertaken to go above and beyond these elementary technologies and has developed innovative devices.
One of the first problems to solve was how to separate the faecal matter from the urine, to either dry it or turn it into compost with the use of earth worms. All the pollution of dry toilets comes from the fact that the faecal matter is constantly being saturated by urine.
Hence, two dry toilet models were patented, using an inclined conveyor belt to separate the faecal matter and the urine: Automatic Bagging System toilets and Earthworm Composting toilets.
The base being laid out in this way, a very long process of development was undertaken to optimize the way these toilets worked:
- The bagging system used to dry the faecal matter was adapted to the technique used to dry hay in barns, a ventilation and solar air preheating technique developed in Switzerland.
- Very big stocking carrousels for drying the faecal matter were developed using big stainless steel discs turning on stainless steel ball bearings. This perfecting process reduced jamming of the systems and hence the size of the technical premises needed, these improvements were particularly appreciated by the high altitude refuge builders.
Research – Development is a fundamental part of the enterprise and various programmes are actually in progress as well as those that appear in the section devoted to this topic.
Today Ecosphere Technologies is made up of 10 people (3 engineers, 4 technicians, 3 sales people and 1 administrator) in a new building containing office and workshop! Since 2005 Ecosphere Technologies has a 2 figure growth rate and is developing itself internationally (see “Export” section).
