Festivals and public events have the potential to become more than temporary gatherings. They can serve as real-world environments where innovative solutions are tested, demonstrated, and shared with the public.
As part of the STRIVE project, a collaboration between City of Malmo and Sanitation360 was made possible during Malmö Garden Show 2026 on May 29th to 31st. The pilot at Malmö Garden Show provided further opportunity to explore how circular sanitation solutions can be integrated into festivals and contribute to a more sustainable future.
During the Malmö Garden Show, Sanitation360 collected source-separated urine through specially designed urinals as part of their circular sanitation solution. By recovering nutrients from human urine, the pilot demonstrated how valuable resources can be returned to the cycle and contribute to the development of recycled fertilisers. The initiative highlighted the role that festivals and public events can play as living testbeds for sustainable innovation. By creating spaces where new solutions can be tested in real-world settings, events can help connect municipalities, companies, and citizens around new approaches to sustainability.
The collaboration reflects the ambitions of STRIVE, which works with festivals, municipalities, and innovation partners across the South Baltic region to strengthen resilience and accelerate the transition towards more sustainable festivals and tourism, by implementing cross-border solutions and test how they can be scaled and replicated in living labs.
“The most exciting part of this is that we successfully piloted this solution at the Malmo Festival in 2025. Since then, Sanitation360 have matured as a business and partnered with a Swedish distributor and the Danish startup Lapee. We are now able to nudge our own organization as well within the City of Malmo by piloting the same solution at multiple events and settings in our city. By piloting at Malmö Garden Show this spring – we and Sanitation360 also made valuable learnings to bring into the main STRIVE pilot this year at the Malmo Festival 2026 on August 7th to 14th.” – says Christin Persson, project coordinator for STRIVE at City of Malmo.