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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!
I see Bill is putting his years of experience in developing shit products to good use.
Must ... resist ... Windows ... quality ... jokes
Table-ized A.I.
Think shanty town with no sewer or sanitation system.
Community bathroom facilities provide sanitation to these areas significantly lowering risks of outbreaks.
And in a totally unrelated news story, "China's Brightest Children Are Being Recruited To Develop AI 'Killer Bots' "
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 only the ACLU hadn't sued to shut down the mental asylums on the grounds that it was inhumane to imprison people who had committed no crime, California wouldn't have this problem. Sad!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
Look to the states that enforce laws and rules about tent cities, RV parking and trash in the street.
They don't have such problems. Their cities stay clean and attract investment.
Its a city police politics problem. Find out why the city police do not to enforce laws. Parking laws. Trash laws. Camping laws. Waste laws.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Reverse Osmosis, the method used on the ISS, is high energy, & highly complex. It is perfect for that situation though and is the method that is used in large scale water treatment plants in the developed world.
For places with limited technical skills, unreliable power and limited supporting infrastructure it is not a good fit.
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
Look to the states that enforce laws and rules about tent cities, RV parking and trash in the street.
If you have "tent cities" then you need to admit you've got some seriously fucked up policies if you're a developed nation.
They don't have such problems. Their cities stay clean and attract investment.
Its a city police politics problem. Find out why the city police do not to enforce laws. Parking laws. Trash laws. Camping laws. Waste laws.
Because there are two ways to police, with the good will of the people or with the fear of the people.
The latter is commonly called a police state where citizens fear breaking laws and talking to the police because punishments are severe and standards of evidence are low or non existent.
The former is how we police in developed nations where the spirit of the law is considered above the letter of the law. If police aren't enforcing every single infraction its because they don't want to be jackbooted thugs and lose the respect and co-operation of the neighbourhoods they service. When the police start clamping down on parking, they earn the ire of both the customers and business owners.
Besides, parking shouldn't be in the police's remit, that's the councils job to manage and monitor.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.