(Image source: Hundred Year Storm)
BY: TRACY PFEIFFER
ANCHOR: ANA COMPAIN-ROMERO
Philanthropy -- and toilets.
Microsoft billionaire and famous philanthropist Bill Gates is calling for a reinvention of the ceramic throne -- to save lives.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will provide more than $40 million in grants to support toilet innovation and other developments in sanitation.
The Foundation released this video to explain why the latrine needs an update.
“For 2.6 billion people around the globe, there’s no place to actually do it. Imagine that. No reliable sanitary toilet. What would you do? Well -- what you have to do -- use anything you can find. …The flush toilet as you and I know it requires a massive amount of sewer infrastructure and an immense amount of water, two things increasingly hard to come by.”
The Guardian reports -- poor sanitation in developing countries kills both economies -- and people.
“Diarrhoea linked to inadequate sanitation is now recognised as the biggest killer of children in Africa, and it is estimated that lack of safe water and sanitation costs the region about 5% of GDP each year.”
A blogger for Portfolio.com explains the grants are meant to inspire innovators to develop...
“...new ways to collect, store and deposit waste, as well as process it into energy, fertilizer and fresh water. One of grants...will fund a global university challenge to invent a toilet that costs less than 5 cents per day and operates without piped-in water, sewer connectivity or outside electricity.”
Finally -- TIME spoke with the head of the Foundation’s Water, Sanitation & Hygiene department, who says -- it’s understandable if the idea inspires a few laughs. But in the end -- this research could benefit everyone, even if you already have an old-faithful flush.
“He says there are biological bacteria that could turn waste into compost; he talks about the possibility of toilets actually turning urine into drinking water...The importance of this research is not always easy to explain, [he says], because anything having to do with human waste provokes a ‘yuck factor.'"
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Transcript by Newsy.
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