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Bill Gates Wants To Reinvent the Toilet

Posted by Soulskill on from the flush-with-ideas dept.

redletterdave writes "Bill Gates, the man responsible for bringing software to the masses with Microsoft and Windows, has plans to reinvent and popularize another industry: Sanitation. Gates, whose philanthropic efforts have helped bring clean water and resources to developing countries via the foundation created by he and his wife Melinda, said at the 'Reinvent The Toilet Fair' in Seattle on Wednesday that he plans to build a toilet that's better suited to developing countries in an effort to cut down on disease and death in those regions. 'Inventing new toilets is one of the most important things we can do to reduce child deaths and disease and improve people's lives,' Gates said. 'It is also something that can help wealthier countries conserve fresh water for other important purposes besides flushing.'" Science Insider has some information on the winning designs from this year.

2 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Reason: by drodal · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's my understanding that when he "helps" he does it in a very "for profit" way. Like buying expensive medicine for poor people, when they could have been helped in a less profitable way......and more sustainable way.....

    So he is still being bill gates........ and not that humanitarian....... (see what happened with OLPC)

    Oh, this info i got, i got from the net, at a place called slash dot.

  2. Re:iPoop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    And incredibly it will be the first toilet ever to have a seat with smooth, rounded edges. Not like all those barbed wire versions the rest of us have been using for 20 years.

    Upon seeing it, Apple-haters will immediately start screaming about how all those who sit on the Apple toilet seat are stupid wimps who aren't strong or smart enough to use a "real" barbed-wire toilet seat (a.k.a., "DOS": Definition Of Suffering).

    Right up until the point that someone other than Apple starts selling a comfortable toilet seat, at which point the same Apple-haters will immediately adopt it, proclaim its superiority over barbed-wire toilet seats, and claim that since a non-Apple non-barbed-wire seat exists, Apple is now redundant and should go die.