Gates Foundation Launches Effort to Reinvent the Toilet

[Pathfinder]

July 19, 2011

Gates Foundation Launches Effort to Reinvent the Toilet

New strategy promotes adoption of safe, affordable sanitation in the developing world

KIGALI, Rwanda -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announce
the launch of a strategy to help bring safe, clean sanitation services to millions of poor people in the developing world.

In a keynote address at the 2011 AfricaSan Conference in Kigali, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation?s Global Development Program, called on donors, governments, the private sector, and NGOs to address the urgent challenge, which affects nearly 40 percent of the world?s population. Flush toilets are unavailable to the vast majority in the developing world, and billions of people lack a safe, reliable toilet or latrine. More than a billion people defecate in the open.

?No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet,? Burwell said in her speech at AfricaSan, the third African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene, organized by the African Ministers? Council on Water (AMCOW). ?But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet.?

The foundation also announced $42 million in new sanitation grants that aim to spur innovations in the capture and storage of waste, as well as its processing into reusable energy, fertilizer, and fresh water. In addition, the foundation will support work with local communities to end open defecation and increase access to affordable, long-term sanitation solutions that people will want to use. Improved sanitation can have a significant impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide. Reducing by half the number of people who don?t have access to basic sanitation is a key target of the United Nations? 2015 Millennium Development Goals. Access to safe sanitation reduces child diarrhea by 30 percent and significantly increases school attendance.

More...
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/safe-affordable-sanitation-110719.aspx

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: Gates Foundation Launches Effort to Reinvent the Toilet

Inventing a Toilet for the 21st Century

Bill Gates
August 14, 2012

Today I attended what has to be one of the oddest summer fairs ever. A year ago, the foundation launched an initiative to tackle the problem of sanitation in the developing world. We called it the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. This week in Seattle, the foundation is holding a Reinvent the Toilet Fair, where we have brought together about 200 grantees, partners, and others who are passionate about creating safe, effective, and inexpensive sanitation services for people without access to flush toilets.

The fair brought together people from a wide range of disciplines?inventors, designers, investors, advocates, academics, and government officials?all thinking about innovative ways to solve this long-standing problem. While at the fair, I awarded prizes to three universities we challenged a year ago to come up with solutions for capturing and processing human waste and transforming it into useful resources. The winners included: first place to California Institute of Technology in the United States for designing a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity, second place to Loughborough University in the United Kingdom for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water, and third place to University of Toronto in Canada for a toilet that sanitizes feces and urine and recovers resources and clean water. A special recognition was awarded to Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) and EOOS for their outstanding design of a toilet user-interface.
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Inventing new toilets is one of the most important things we can do to reduce child deaths and disease and improve people?s lives. It is also something that can help wealthier countries conserve fresh water for other important purposes besides flushing.

We don?t have all the answers yet, but I?m optimistic that we can and will solve this problem. I?m hopeful that this unusual summer fair will be a positive step toward that important goal.

Full text:
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/Inventing-a-Toilet-for-the-21st-Century