Gates Foundation Spends $42 Million For Better Toilet

The Gates Foundation has just announced a $42 million project over several years to develop a toilet that doesn't need water, mains power or sewerage and that will cost next to nothing

Imagine a toilet that takes human waste and converts it into minerals for fertiliser and clean water, while harvesting energy in the process.

The toilet doesn’t use water, doesn’t need expensive infrastructure of a sewerage system, doesn’t need to be connected to mains electricity and, unlike composting toilets, doesn’t need lots of space and time. If a new multi-million dollar project, the ‘Reinventing the toilet challenge’, is a success, such a toilet may soon become a reality.

The first mass sanitation revolution – the invention of the modern flush toilet and sewerage system - happened in the 18th century and is credited with saving more lives than any other advance in healthcare. However, there are still some 2.6 billion people around the world who have to use pit latrines or defecate in the open.

Not everyone in the sanitation world thinks that microwaves and microprocessors are an appropriate way forward. Joseph Jenkins, a long-time proponent of ‘humanure’ (www.humanurehandbook.com) - composting of human waste until safe enough for vegetable gardening - says 'the Gates Foundation and most in the international sanitation community are stuck in the old paradigm, which is the belief that our excrement is waste and needs to be disposed of in one way or another.'

'The new paradigm sees excrement as a valuable resource that should be collected and processed for recycling. It's a huge leap in consciousness. When one accepts the new paradigm, then reinventing toilets isn't such a challenge as toilets simply become collection devices. In the new paradigm, every toilet is a piggy bank and every turd is a nickel.'

NOTE: This is the FIRST beneficial project EVER from Gates. I've long objected to using drinking water for flushing toilets. A complete, expensive waste of resources. The Humanure book is excellent reading. Nothing better than utilizing on-site natural inputs for food production.