Bill Gates speaks at the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing, China, on Tuesday (Photo: Thomas Peter / Reuters)
U.S. billionaire philanthropist, Bill Gates, on Tuesday, unveiled a
futuristic toilet in Beijing, that doesn’t need water or sewers and
uses chemicals to turn human waste into fertilizer.
The Microsoft Corp co-founder, who a day earlier was one of the
high profile guests at a major trade event in Shanghai, also lauded the
globalized and free trade systems that made the toilet technology
possible.
“I honestly believe trade allows every country to do what it’s best at,” he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
“So when I talk about components of this toilet being made in
China, others in Thailand, others in the United States - you really want
to be bringing together all of that IQ so that you’re getting that
combination.”
A
man looks at a toilet design by Cranfield University at the Reinvented
Toilet Expo showcasing sewerless sanitation technology in Beijing, China
November 6, 2018. (Photo: REUTERS/Thomas Peter.)
The toilet, which Gates said was ready for sale after years of
development, is the brainchild of research projects funded by the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s biggest private philanthropy
organization. There are multiple designs of the toilet but all work by
separating liquid and solid waste.
“The current toilet simply sends the waste away in the water,
whereas these toilets don’t have the sewer. They take both the liquids
and solids and do chemical work on it, including burning it in most
cases,” Gates told Reuters.
He compared the change from traditional toilets to waterless models
as similar to development in computing around the time he founded
Microsoft in the mid-1970s.
“In the way that a personal computer is sort of self contained,
not a gigantic thing, we can do this chemical processing at the
household level,” he said.
KICKING TIRES
Poor sanitation kills half a million children under the age of five
annually and costs the globe over $200 billion a year in healthcare
costs and lost income, according to the foundation.
Gates’ foundation has committed roughly $200 million to the toilet
project and expects to spend the same amount again before the toilets
are viable for wide-scale distribution.
“This year the volume of toilets will literally be in the 100s while people are still kicking tires (testing them),” Gates said.
During a speech at the Beijing event, Gates held up a clear jar of
human faeces to illustrate the importance of improving sanitation.
“It’s a good reminder that in (the jar) there could be 200
trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000
parasitic worm eggs.”
It is the first time Gates’ foundation has addressed an event in
China, where President Xi Jinping is promoting a three-year “toilet
revolution” to build or upgrade 64,000 public toilets by 2020 to help
boost tourism and economic growth.
Gates said the next step for the project is to pitch the concept to
manufacturers, saying he expects the market for the toilets to be over
$6 billion by 2030.
Source: Reuters.
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