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Gates Foundation Spent $200 Million Funding Toilet Research (bloomberg.com)
According to Bloomberg, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "spent $200 million over seven years funding sanitation research, showcased some 20 novel toilet and sludge-processing designs that eliminate harmful pathogens and convert bodily waste into clean water and fertilizer." Gates told the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing on Tuesday that these technologies at the event "are the most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years." From the report: Holding a beaker of human excreta that, Gates said, contained as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder explained to a 400-strong crowd that new approaches for sterilizing human waste may help end almost 500,000 infant deaths and save $233 billion annually in costs linked to diarrhea, cholera and other diseases caused by poor water, sanitation and hygiene. One approach from the California Institute of Technology that Gates said he finds "super interesting" integrates an electrochemical reactor to break down water and human waste into fertilizer and hydrogen, which can be stored in hydrogen fuel cells as energy.
The reinvented toilet market, which has attracted companies including Japan's LIXIL Group, could generate $6 billion a year worldwide by 2030, according to Gates. The initial demand for the reinvented toilet will be in places like schools, apartment buildings, and community bathroom facilities. As adoption of these multi-unit toilets increases, and costs decline, a new category of reinvented household toilets will become available, the Gates Foundation said.
The reinvented toilet market, which has attracted companies including Japan's LIXIL Group, could generate $6 billion a year worldwide by 2030, according to Gates. The initial demand for the reinvented toilet will be in places like schools, apartment buildings, and community bathroom facilities. As adoption of these multi-unit toilets increases, and costs decline, a new category of reinvented household toilets will become available, the Gates Foundation said.
Yeah, so it turns out pretty much every noncommercial toilet in America is a joke. The seals fail. They just fail. The huge amount of waste that arises from *having toilets with sucky designs in almost every home in the country* is insane.
The fix is pretty simple: whenever a toilet shows up in a landfill or dumpster, bill the manufacturer.
We don't do that, so every producer has an incentive to make toilets crappy enough that they fail within a few years.
Uh, where exactly are you getting your data that confirms we're throwing away toilets every few years? My last house still had the avocado green and harvest gold toilets installed from the 70's (no, I'm not joking), and my current house still has the original hardware that's almost 20 years old. Yes, internal hardware like the flapper breaks down over time (more likely due to the chlorinated water attacking the rubber material), but you don't rip a toilet out of a house because the guts fail. Every toilet I've replaced has been due to something other than breakage (color, height, shape, water capacity, etc.)
Much like consumer electronics, fashion has put more hardware into landfills than function has.