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Bill Gates Looks to Reinvent the Toilet

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the German government are working on a $10 million project to provide innovative sanitation facilities to 800,000 Kenyans over the next five years. From the article: "The goal is to find 'innovative solutions' for sanitation in poor urban areas. Gates says it's time to move on from the era of the classic toilet. He points out that, despite all the recent achievements, 40% of the world's population, or some 2.5 billion people, still lives without proper means of flushing away excrement. But just giving them Western-style toilets isn't possible because of the world's limited water resources." I wonder what the toilet version of The Blue Screen of Death is.

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  1. Re:Making fun of gates by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What about Composting sawdust toilet I'm sure the locals have something they can use in lieu of sawdust.

    You could even create a dehydration toilet Urine is collected separate (where it could easily be evaporated off and the urea used as fertilizer). After dehydrated the human waste could take place of animal dung used for heat.

    I think a bigger and better use of this money would be something to sanitize. Something as simple as soap or the 'waterless' alcohol based sanitizers.