Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Bill Gates Looks To Advance Toilet Technology

Bill Gates, via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, announced Tuesday that he is hoping to advance technology in a new and novel area: toilet sanitation. The foundation, in the "Reinvent the Toilet Fair" in Seattle yesterday, demonstrated an effort to help tackle the problem of sanitation in the developing world, showing off a number of groups working to advance the state of the art of the humble toilet. The foundation said its effort is focused on creating safe, effective, and inexpensive sanitation for people who do not have access to flush toilets--which Gates called "irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population." As part of that effort, Gates awarded prizes to three universities for their work on capturing and processing human waste and transforming it into useful resources; those included a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity, another that creates biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water, and another that sanitizes waste and produces clean water.