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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.
I was once advised by a mentor to 'never skimp on anything that gets between you and the ground'. He was talking about tires, shoes, and beds, but toilets certainly qualify. Every human poops, and many of the worst diseases still extant (cholera and friends) thrive in conditions of poor sanitation. So don't make fun of this research -- respect the throne! Invest in it!
What does it sound like it means? You don't even have to RTFA, just read the summary. Many places lack appropriate sewage treatment infrastructure, if they have it at all, harming human and environmental health when sewage is released untreated. The expo showcased alternative sewage and sanitation technologies, including on-site treatment technologies.
> 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.
> Without cost-effective alternatives to sewers and waste-treatment facilities, urbanization and population growth will add to the burden. In some cities, more than half the volume of human waste escapes into the environment untreated
I see Bill is putting his years of experience in developing shit products to good use.
Good thing it was $200 million. RTFA.
Bill doesn't know how to use them. I can see how that would be confusing.
and microsoft can probably leverage these findings for windows development.
The initial demand for the reinvented toilet will be in places like schools, apartment buildings, and community bathroom facilities.
In the public schools, they'd be broken with a week.
BTW, what's a community bathroom facility? I know what each word means, but can't put them all together. Is it the shared bathroom like in locker rooms and dormitories?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
We have a few thousand homeless people with little or no access to a toilet, much less a shower. Local businesses complain about excreta at their doors, but then note that if there was a nearby public toilet it would just attract more homeless people. We are currently recovering from an outbreak of hepatitis A as a result of sanitation problems among the homeless and those nearby.
My city receives tourists from all over the world and it's sad that we're looking like a 3rd world country.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Septic tanks require water, ground that perks properly, low population density, and fairly expensive periodic maintenance.
Your idea is stupid and will not work.
Must ... resist ... Windows ... quality ... jokes
Table-ized A.I.
Rural Americans have no concept of the real world. They think they are "independent" yet rely on the infrastructure provided by a wealthy country.
City dwellers have no concept about the real world. Without rural areas you would have no food and die
The outflow of a septic tank is still highly contaminated. Drinking water that is contaminated by that outflow would be hazourdous to drink.
And in a totally unrelated news story, "China's Brightest Children Are Being Recruited To Develop AI 'Killer Bots' "
I'm not upset, I'm stunned and frightened of your ignorance! Please tell me you're trolling. I'll freely admit you've got me if you admit it. If not, you have NO CLUE!!! Rural can live (and have lived) without cities. But cities can never existing without agriculture and industrial production --> which pretty much exclusively requires rural landmass. Any such actives done in the city would be limited and would not scale to meet the demand of a densely populated metropolitan area.
Life is not for the lazy.
It's interesting to see this sort of research. Getting rid of people's shit is actually quite difficult to do in an efficient and sanitary way. It's also a difficult UX problem, because levels of care in excreting are substantially different across cultures.
For example, in poor areas the idea of sitting on a toilet seat is a completely alien idea. People either squat over holes in the ground or stand on the toilet bowl and squat. People will occasionally shit or pee all over the toilet, causing problems. Getting the shit/pee out of the bowl along with toilet paper etc is difficult. Then there's the odors/smell/leftover shit problem.
Plus toilets need cleaning...lots of cleaning. In fact, they're cleaned more often than any other area, generally speaking. And they're still filthy.
We haven't even gotten to the "moving the shit out of the toilet" part at that point.
Then of course there's the "what do you do with the combined shit and piss of 50,000 people."
So kudos for the Gates Foundation for doing something creative with their money. These sort of structural problems get worse as time goes on. People don't understand the sheer amounts of infrastructure it takes to deal with shit like this. Here's an example:
In NYC, there are about 3 million households. Each household has 2 toilets. Each toilet requires a holding tank of 6 or 13 gallons. So at any given time there are about 18-39 million gallons of water hanging around that had to be delivered to every household. Water pressure is generally 80psi, which means you need 80psi to 3m point locations across 302 square miles (784 sq km). That pressure doesn't just fill toilets, it supplies showers, sinks, washing machines, etc.
And that's just one municipal water supply. The sewer system is completely independent
It's surprising, to be honest, that universities or governments aren't looking at these sort of issues. I mean, there are all kinds of efficiencies that are possible. For example, why not use the water pipes for AC heat transfer?
Rural Americans have no concept of the real world.
City dwellers have no concept about the real world.
It turns out, you're both right.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If waste water(cleaning, toilet) can already be processed to be consumable by our astronauts. Why did the gates have to invent/invest to find a new way of doing it.
Is their way that much more economical????
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Is that too much to ask? Just send the bill to Salesforce and Twitter.
San Francisco voters approved Measure C yesterday to tax Salesforce, Twitter, and every other business with more than $50 million in revenue in order to fund solutions to the homeless problem. The tax is .5% of gross revenue. The measure was promoted by the CEO of Salesforce but opposed by the CEO of Twitter.
The measure however might be challenged in court because it is a new tax and probably won't get 2/3rds of the vote, which is needed if a new tax is proposed by government officials. SInce Measure C was proposed by a group of citizens, it might only need 50% + 1.
Bad headline, this isn't "toilet" research, it's biotech.
No, dumbass, the rural lifestyle in the US can't exist without the cities.
Nobody said that the land can't exist, or wouldn't still have a few people on it.
But they wouldn't have the same lifestyle. And they'd be using pit toilets for sure.
What is your point?
Peasant life was so shitty they tried to flee into cities at the first opportunity and in many countries they still try.
Without agricultural machinery and chemicals farming seriously sucks, but either is impossible without cities. Rural landmass my arse.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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.
I wish the west would invest more in toilets. 99.9% of them here are just basic flush models, not even heated seats. Why the hell are we still using toilet paper, it's such a waste of resources and doesn't even clean that well. If you got faeces on any other part of your body you wouldn't wipe it off with a paper tower and call it job done.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Not to mention floods spread the love.
You're absolutely correct. I'm about to replace all of mine. Bought the house 5.5 years ago, but I'm quite certain the toilets were the ones installed in '78 when the house was built. I'm replacing them in small part because one of the flappers is not sealing and the others are getting close to that point, but in large part because they use about 10 gallons (yes, I'm exaggerating, but it's still way more than necessary) every time they flush. If I wanted to, I could keep them running for another 30 years for about 1/5 the cost of the new toilets, but the savings on getting dual-flush models will negate that over 10 years (yeah, my water rate is kinda silly...).
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
He's rich, he probably uses a Mac these days.
#DeleteFacebook
ironically, the catch phrase "no shit Sherlock" comes to mind for Mr. Gates. The more people, the more poop. The more poop, the more pooper scoopers. a beautiful cycle like water.. just keep it clean and let it flow. reminds me of an SNL episode called Colon Blow. ;-) good one for a Throwback Thursday.
Amen.
What a shitty way to spend money
"It's a shitty job, but _somebody_ has to do it!"
I'm currently working on software testing... I don't see any difference between that and toilet research! It's all just dealing with the shit other people have left behind.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Right, because women NEVER get pregnant from rape or incest!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Reducing the amount of water used on toilet like that can make the toilet not operate correctly. Usually clog more often, as they are designed to create a siphon when a larger amount of water raises the back side water line. And then to continue the siphon long enough to get everything up and over. If that siphon gets things up and over without enough water to push it down you get a clog.
With the older models that use 8+ gallons a single brick wont affect much, but adding multiple, or doing it to one using 4 gallons...
However, all seals are replaceable, and you can replace them all ~$20 in an hr or two.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
A clump of cells is not an infant and represents a trivial investment of resources on society's and the mother's part. Definitions are important, otherwise you could easily pay off the national debt if you defined "paying off" as "sucking" and "the national debt" as "my dick".
Agreed, our rivers get dumped with half treated sewerage all the time, kills all the fish and I'm sure it causes other issues as well, if the toilet can take over the job of the treatment plants you don't have to build all the infrastructure that is needed currently. This is an awesome thing to invest in. My wife dragged me to a humanure course, and I am glad she did, current methods of turning human shit into fertilizer is time consuming and you need a lot of space to do it. Septic tanks are a pain, most toilet cleaners fuck with them, even ones that are marked as being septic tank friendly, at some point they have to drained, which is when the honey sucker truck is called in and they suck all the shit out. So yeah, advances of this sort will change a lot of people's lives.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
This news brings Abby Rockefeller to my memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I just keep wondering if Bill Gates could have better invest his money in this company: http://www.clivusmultrum.com/