On the initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and in cooperation with President Xi’s Chinese government which announced the toilet revolution in 2015, an exhibition was organized in Beijing in November 2018. This exhibition was also the opportunity to present the adoption of the ISO 305001 Standard on ‘on-site sanitation such as those designed by WeCo. This exhibition presented the new technologies of sanitation systems for toilets outside so-called autonomous networks or non-collective sanitation, sustainable or ecological, and above all, innovative, thus excluding dry toilets which are not considered as sufficiently ensuring the destruction of bacteria and the spread of diseases including diarrhea which kills thousands of children each year, in addition to the problems of acceptance of use, knowing that dry toilets only seem suitable for rural areas of emerging countries.
On the occasion of this exhibition in China, the technology initially developed by Caltech for electrochemical treatment of excreta was presented. It should be recalled that WeCo and Caltech have decided to cooperate for the development of this technology, after the award they both had in China in 2016 during a call for projects organized again by the Gates Foundation and the Chinese national tourism agency. This cooperation enabled WeCo to integrate the group of experts at AFNOR and ISO which adopted the ISO 30500 standard, during which the interview with Ms. Dekeuwer, President of WeCo, was carried out and disseminated. at the Beijing Fair on Reinvented Toilets. This cooperation also made it possible to test and adapt Caltech’s technology to field conditions, combining biological treatment and electrochemical treatment in order to recycle excreta on site and more particularly to convert urine contaminated by organic matter and bacteria from faecal sludge in treated water for flushing toilets and other uses such as watering plants. It is therefore a closed circuit system which allows to benefit from ecological flush toilets, which not only do not consume water, which degrade all bacteria, but which produce surplus water from urine collected.