Ashley and Waste Enterprisers attended the 2012 Unreasonable Institute. If you want to read more and connect with her click here to see her Unreasonable Profile.


Ashley Murray: Ashley is the Founder & CEO of Waste Enterprisers Ltd., a company that’s out to change the way the world does sanitation. Ashley’s been thinking about little other than other people’s poop for the last ten years. During that time she’s worked to convince Chinese officials of the merits of waste reuse; earned her MS and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley; been an avid sanitation tourist – visiting toilets, failed treatment plants, and dumping sites, among other attractions; worked as a researcher for the International Water Management Institute in Ghana; and conducted consultancies for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the International Finance Corporation on developing sanitation businesses in Ghana and Kenya.

I ask myself “Why poop?” all the time

When not immersed in fecal matters, Ashley loves long rigorous hikes, athletics, cooking, reading, and doing crossword puzzles.

Waste Enterprisers: Waste Enterprisers is bringing radical innovation to the standard methods and economics of human waste management in developing cities. By using human waste as the primary feedstock for other products, they harness its resource value, successfully restructuring the financial incentives that have failed human waste collection, treatment, and disposal in the developing world. Their waste-based businesses create a demand for waste that unlocks profitable alternatives to haphazard dumping. They then reinvest funds back into the sanitation sector to extend services to poor communities.

I’m really driven by the possibility and the potential to finally make traction toward solving the sanitation crisis

Unreasonable Institute

Author Unreasonable Institute

The Unreasonable Institute arms entrepreneurs creating solutions to the world’s biggest social and environmental problems with the mentorship, capital, and networks they need to do so.

More by Unreasonable Institute