The world remains “dangerously off track” to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all), according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report published at the start of October.  

A UN global analysis of sanitation and drinking water found that while many countries have national WASH policies and targets, financing and delivery capacity remain “dangerously thin”.

The World Health Organisation supports that message, adding that even if WASH infrastructure is built, it needs to be adequately supported. “The message is clear: progress will not come from infrastructure alone, but from stronger systems able to plan, finance, regulate and sustain safe services,” it said in its October report.

David Auerbach, Lindsay Stradley and Ani Vallabhaneni, the co-founders of the Sanergy Collaborative, chose to launch the organisation in Kenya because they wanted to apply a business-driven solution in a country where WASH remains a significant problem.

UN data from 2024 showed that 36% of the population of Kenya (then 56.4m people) was living without access to safely managed sanitation services. Many of those people live in the informal settlements of Kenya’s rapidly growing cities, areas of unplanned housing, typically made from timber, corrugated iron or stone, which are not connected to the city infrastructure, including sewers. This type of unplanned urban growth is expected to continue in the coming decades.

Meanwhile, farmers in Kenya are battling with soil with greatly reduced productivity, in part due to decades of use of synthetic fertilisers. Only around 20% of Kenya’s land is arable – if large portions of that land are rendered unproductive, it creates a significant risk of food shortages, while putting livelihoods, particularly those of smallholder farmers, under strain.

Auerbach, Stradley and Vallabhaneni founded Sanergy (as it was then called) in 2011 while studying at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the US. At that point, the WASH non-profit, which provided safe access to sanitation and waste collection, and the for-profit agriproducts unit, which treated waste collected by the non-profit and upcycled it into saleable organic products, operated under the same name, although were separate entities.

In 2021 Sanergy was a finalist in the inaugural Earthshot Prize, a global environmental award launched by the UK’s Prince William which recognises innovative solutions to repair the planet. That same year the founders rebranded the two organisations: Fresh Life, the WASH non-profit, and Regen Organics, the agriproducts business.

The new brands enabled each entity to enter new markets (such as Zambia for Fresh Life), expand their product portfolios (such as Regen Organics taking on new organic waste streams), and explore additional sources of revenue generation.

International law firm Hogan Lovells Cadwalader supported Regen Organics as it then raised its next financing round, which brought in carbon and climate tech investors, development financing institutions, and circular economy investors. Hogan Lovells Cadwalader continues to support the Sanergy Collaborative through its pro bono practice.

Fresh Life began its work in Nairobi in 2011 – at that point under the Sanergy brand – on World Toilet Day, 19 November. Its main service, which it has offered since launch, is waterless, cubicle toilets, designed for locations with no sewage systems and in water-scarce areas.

From the outside, the cubicles look much like any other self-contained toilet. But these toilets were specially designed for Sanergy, with a squat plate or pan that has two openings: one for liquid waste and one for solid waste. The waste is collected in easy to remove cartridges.

The separation system has a number of advantages over other types of toilet or pit latrine common in similar communities. It doesn’t require plumbing or need to be flushed. Because of the separation of liquids and solids the fermentation that occurs in pit latrines is avoided. The natural breakdown of the dry waste is more efficient than if it were mixed with liquid waste, and cleaning and maintenance of the toilet is easier.

Fresh Life franchises the toilets to local residents, who run them as a business. The toilet operators receive training, access to finance and ongoing support. The most common business model for the toilets is charging a per-use fee (typically 5 to 10 Kenyan Shillings, less than 60 pence GBP) while others charge landlords who add the cost to their tenants' rent.

The waste is collected daily by workers employed, trained and equipped by Fresh Life. Cartridges of waste are often transported by wheelbarrow or handcarts, to ensure the toilets can be installed deep in informal settlements where vans or trucks may not be able to reach. The waste is then taken to Regen Organics facilities to be safely treated and converted into fertiliser or animal feed by the black soldier fly larvae.

Fresh Life now provides access to toilets for 350,000 people every day across Kenya and Zambia. The organisation currently supports 8,000 entrepreneurs to run toilets. In Fresh Life’s 2025 annual report, Stradley, now the organisation’s executive director, wrote: “Our work continues to demonstrate that inclusive, climate-smart sanitation is possible and that it can be delivered sustainably and at scale.”

She added that the charity’s goal is to position itself as a “blueprint for safely managed sanitation that can be replicated across cities throughout Africa”. In February the Kenyan government launched a National Sanitation Management Policy, under the theme of “Towards Safely Managed Sanitation for All by 2030 and Beyond”. Stradley welcomed a number of elements of the policy, including a greater focus on non-sewered sanitation and a strong emphasis on blended finance and public–private partnerships to help close the sanitation investment gap.

It’s one thing to produce an environmentally friendly farming product, but another to convince cash-strapped smallholder farmers to buy it, instead of the synthetic fertilisers they’re familiar with. The key is to build trust, explains Tim Egan, head of new technology at Regen Organics. “Farmers are reluctant to invest in products without clear proof of performance,” he pointed out at the Bio360 Africa conference in Johannesburg in June. “We need to work with influencers in communities, such as respected farmers, and set up local trial plots to decrease the perceived risk.”

Regen Organics’ flagship fertiliser, called EverGrow, is based on “frass”, which is the mixture of insect waste (excrement), shed skins (exoskeletons), and leftover organic feed after the black soldier fly larvae have been harvested. This fertiliser, according to an independent evaluation in 2023, generates a 9.3x social return on every dollar invested, rising to 19x when accounting for the broader economic multiplier effects of increased farmer income. Use of EverGrow was associated with an average annual income increase of US$1,486 per small farm household.

Co-founder Auerbach believes the evaluation is evidence of the broader social impact Regen Organics is making: “[The farmers] were not only making more profit, but what they were doing with that income was hiring people for their companies, creating more jobs, and then also most importantly, sending their kids, especially girls, to school, which is the best long-term social investment that you can make.”

Auerbach, in his current role as president of Regen Organics, was named in September as a finalist in the social entrepreneurs category of the 2027 Schwab Foundation Awards, which are presented during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Being a finalist for the awards is further global recognition of the Sanergy Collaborative’s work and will significantly raise the organisation’s profile, particularly among policymakers and investors.

“Kaizen”, the Japanese word for improvement, has been adopted internationally as a business concept which asserts that small, incremental changes can lead to large-scale long-term results.

Michael Lwoyelo, managing director of Regen Organics, who has been a part of the Sanergy Collaborative since he was building Fresh Life toilets in 2012, invokes Kaizen when weighing up the possibility of making a positive impact on the environment in the face of a polarised political landscape, the seemingly unassailable power of fossil fuel companies and a worsening climate crisis.

Despite the seemingly bleak picture, Lwoyelo believes circular models like the Sanergy Collaborative’s can cumulatively make the positive impact necessary to allow humanity to thrive on a healthy planet.

“I think there are technologies that exist that can’t solve the biggest problem at once, ie reducing global warming, but the aggregation of these small interventions will get us there,” he says.

The Sanergy Collaborative’s latest innovation is selling carbon credits for the methane avoidance delivered by Fresh Life and Regen Organics’ work. The credits are verified by Verra, which runs the world's most widely used greenhouse gas crediting programme.

The carbon credits further strengthen its business model, to keep its toilets working, black soldier flies buzzing and sustain the Sanergy Collaborative’s virtuous circle of impact.