Published August 23, 2011
Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates started his career with the dream of changing lives by putting a computer on every desk. Today, he is dreaming of saving lives by putting a toilet in every home—and not just any toilet.
Billions of People Lack Access to Sanitation and Clean Water
Right now, 40 percent of the global population—more than 2.6 billion people around the world—are without access to effective sanitation facilities and clean drinking water. Of that number, UNICEF estimates that 1.1 billion people worldwide don’t have access to any kind of toilet and have no way of safely eliminating excrement and other waste.
In many Third World cities, people use what are called “flying toilets.” They collect their waste in plastic bags and throw it into the street.
Poor Sanitation Leads to Deadly Disease
As a result of improper human-waste disposal, drinking water is often contaminated and people come into direct contact with feces, two conditions that lead to diarrhea, cholera and other diseases.
According to UNICEF, at least 1.2 million children under the age of five die from diarrhea every year, more than are killed by HIV/AIDS and malaria.
New Toilets Needed for Developing World
Western-style toilets won’t solve the problem, because many parts of the world have neither the water nor the sewer infrastructure needed for traditional flush toilets.
So the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its partners are taking a multi-tiered approach, funding projects to provide pit latrines in urban slums and rural areas without good sanitation, and making research grants aimed at creating the ultimate toilet and turning human waste into an asset.
Reinventing the Toilet
Supported by foundation grants, scientists worldwide are working to reinvent the toilet, with innovations that can turn human waste into compost, fertilizer, inexpensive fuel or renewable energy, and transform urine into drinking water.
The foundation says any new toilet design must be easy to install, use and maintain; can’t use water as a primary component; and has to be affordable, costing no more than 5 cents per person each day in U.S. currency.
The goal now is to produce several new toilet prototypes within a year, and to have reinvented toilets on the market in developing countries in about three years.