Reinventing the toilet

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has launched a multimillion dollar challenge to turn the design (and function) of toilets on its head. Literally.

In the vein of modern green philosophy (which some have now dubbed the blue philosophy), the world’s do-goodders no longer seek to merely re-cycle (ie find new uses for materials and products that have already been used before). The word on the streets these days is up-cycling and it is used to describe any process that involves waste materials being turned into raw materials.

Bill Gates is not one to fall out of steps with the times. When the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses mainly on tackling extreme poverty and bringing healthcare to underdeveloped nations, launched a challenge “to invent a safe, waterless toilet that transform human waste into energy, clean water and nutrients”, the inventors of the world went to work, inspired as much by the challenge as the opportunity to actually see their ideas being developed. The foundation is the largest privately owned charitable institution in the world and puts big money where it’s mouth is – the grant for the toilet project alone is 3 million dollars, which is a mere fraction of the budget the foundation has allocated for grants in the field of sanitation in the developing world.

The aim of the Toilet Challenge, states the website, is to “address the failures of the 18th century toilet, which is not meeting the needs of the 2.6 billion people who lack access to sanitation”.  According to Save the Children, 1.5 million children die every year from illnesses caused by lack of hygiene.

The challenge winners are eight universities, three of which are European, each one with its own idea on how to revolutionise the way people use the toilet.

The team from Loughbourough University, UK, for example, suggests transforming faeces into a highly energetic combustible, whereas the Swiss Federal Institute proposes a urine- diverting toilet that recovers water. Other ideas involve microwaving human waste to create electricity or turning it into hydrogen gas.

To find out more about the project visit: www.gatesfoundation.org