Dyllon Randall, from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Cape Town, and his team scooped two prizes at UNLEASH 2018 with their SaniHive prototype – a self-sustaining toilet hub that recovers value from waste. They won the Global Scalability Potential award as well as first prize in the Clean Water & Sanitation track. The innovation has huge potential in urban slums. SaniHive, a modular, fully integrated design, is inspired by the structure of honeycomb, and maximises space in an urban slum. It took the laurels for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, as well as the Global Scalability Potential award, beating the 995 other contestants and 169 other solutions. UNLEASH 2018 is a global innovation lab; this year it was held in Singapore. It brings together 1 000 top young talents (aged between 20 and 35) from 100 countries to create real, scalable solutions to the SDGs on food, water, health, education, energy, urban sustainability, responsible supply chain and so on. Read more

Dr Dyllon Randall, was also a finalist at the IChemE awards this year in two categories: Research Project Award and Sustainability Award. Last month his team announced that they had successfully grown the first bio-brick from human urine. Read more

Read more about Dyllon Randall, one of the Green Talents 2011.