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Belgrade company sends portable toilets to Texas

By CAMDEN EASTERLING, Chronicle Staff Writer

A Belgrade company has seen its sales of portable toilets to federal buyers skyrocket due to Hurricane Katrina.


 Phillips Environmental Products, a family owned company that pioneered plastic bags and a compound that turns feces into a semi-solid, odorless gel, has sent truckloads of its products to Texas for use by Katrina victims.

Last week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency requested $1.4 million worth of the bags, which sell for about $1.

"Within 24 hours, we had sent out seven semis," CEO and president Bill Phillips said.

The company normally sells about $500,000 worth of products to FEMA annually.

Soon after the FEMA order came in, the U.S. Department of Defense called in its own order - $1.3 million worth.

"They basically wanted everything we had," Phillips said of the federal requests. "But we couldn't do that."

The company needed to keep enough bags on hand to fill small orders for recreation companies such as REI and Cabela's.

Users can place the bags, which the company terms "wag bags," in a mesh liner suspended underneath a plastic toilet seat. Or users can place the bags in a hole in the ground and squat.

Once sealed, the biodegradable bags go into a second heavy-duty biodegradable bag that the Environmental Protection Agency has approved for disposal in landfills.

The company calls the product the Portable Environmental Toilet, or PETT.

Phillips Environmental Products also sells its products to the federal government for use by soldiers in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Camden Easterling is at ceasterling@dailychronicle.com

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