Bill Gates, ah the starter of Microsoft and a billion other brilliant ideas all the way from Windows to the Gates Foundation. Well he has done it again, Gates is in the news and this time its’ for a Global Good reason and that is to reinvent the toilet. Toilet’s which are taken for granted here in the states and many other countries are a complete luxury in many developing countries around the world who do not have the sewer and water systems to be able to really handle the irrigation loads that small and big cities need to effectively manage and control the chaos of waste the comes from the citizens.
According to the Christian Post article, innovating some new ideas in this space and industry can lead to a positive impact for billions of people around the world, definitely worth giving some attention and press to. I wish that more ideas like this would get publicized in the news and have media coverage and support than all of the violence and mindless celebrity news that crowds the air waves ( and internet streams ) these days.
Over the past 200 years sanitation has been one of the biggest factors in controlling diseases and clean water supplies for the health of countries and major populations whether that be in Africa, India, or anywhere and is especially a reason the US and the UK have been able to thrive so much as well as countless other major countries.
The funny thing is this reminds me somewhat of a movie in 2004 called Envy ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326856/ ) where Ben Stiller and Jack Black act in a comedy about a product called Vapoorize playing off the word vaporize but for poo, not trying to be immature here people, it is an article on the toilet thought of by Bill Gates latest words. Anyways their product has some sort of chemical in the movie that chemically dissolves the poo’s into thin air. For this Bill Gates iniative I assume they are interested in some sort of products which can sanitize waste as well as convert it into some sort of non germy by product such as water or maybe some form of energy which can be released locally back to the environment rather than needing expensive irrigation systems planned and developed throughout the entire nation just for a few cities to have working toilets which is not always feasible.
When further reading into the issue and their research they are looking to reduce about half the number of people that do not currently have sanitary means for disposal of this waste and some solutions they are looking at are water less toilets. There are over 1.5 million deaths every single year due to these sanitation problems so they are definitely a big concern.
Gates is putting $41.5 million behind these iniatives to look for more innovative ways of dealing with these problems and solutions that can be executed across the world to improve sanitation.
Read more about the Gates Foundation belief that we need a new toilet on CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/07/19/toilet.design.gates/index.html?hpt=te_t1
The Gates Foundation Wikipedia ( Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation
Official Gates Foundation Website: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
Grant Seeker Information and Overview from Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/grantseeker/Pages/overview.aspx
Read “Bill Gates Introduces ‘Toilet 2.0’ on ChristianPost.com: http://www.christianpost.com/news/bill-gates-reinventing-flush-toilets-52532/
PCWORLD: http://www.pcworld.com/article/235768/will_bill_gates_build_toilet_20.html