The Toilet From Space - Bioreactor

“What do you do for toilets and water?”

is one of the most common questions we get asked. In this piece we answer all of the most important questions.

If you’re in the city or somewhere with infrastructure, we can hook up to traditional sewer or septic — just like a regular house. But a lot of our customers are building off-grid, on rural land, or in remote places where those systems aren’t available.

Generally septic install involves the need of digging a giant tank, testing your soil, laying out a leach field, and getting a lot of permits. It’s slow. It’s expensive (think $20-60k*). And it only works in certain conditions which can be challenging if you’re building in rough terrain like near water, rocky soil, mountain tops etc.

So we built something better.


Meet the

Bioreactor Toilet

(or The Toilet from Space)

Inspired by how astronauts manage waste on the International Space Station. There’s no sewage system in space. They recycle. And that’s exactly what our bioreactor toilet does. While still being a traditional toilet at heart, what’s inside is what matters.

How it works

  1. Dirty water goes in

  2. Processed through our filtration system

  3. Voila, you get clean recycled water

Inside the unit, there are over 10 stages of purification:

  • Some chambers use bacteria (just like in nature) to break down waste

  • Others mimic soil layers with sand, gravel, and organic filters

  • The final stage uses UV and ozone to kill any leftover bacteria

The result is clean water that can be reused for flushing.

It installs next to your toilet and doesn’t require plumbing to snake through your whole home. That means simpler floorplans, fewer trades needed, and more savings.

It’s a septic system — shrunk down into a smart, compact box.

And just like space tech, it’s designed to be self-contained, efficient, and reusable.

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Why Tinybox isn’t just another Prefab home