The toilet was invented in 1776, and while it has performed nothing short of a miracle in making people's lives healthier, it hasn't reached 2/3rd of the world. The Gates Foundation is giving $41.5 million worth of grants to a few universities to develop toilets that cost pennies and recycle or render feces harmless. Diarrheal diseases contribute to the deaths of 1.5 million children around the world, and poor sanitation is the chief cause.
Here are what the recipient of the grants plan to do with the donated funds. Let's hope some of the individuals below will make good use of human waste ASAP. The fate of millions depends on their work.
• Andrew Cotton, from Loughborough University in the UK, is making a toilet that will "recover water and salt from feces and urine."
• Georgios Stefanidis, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, is working on a toilet that will generate electricity from waste, which will be "gasified into plasma" using microwaves. That gas can be used to generate electricity, according to the proposal.
• Yu-Ling Chen, from the University of Toronto, is trying to make a toilet that will "sanitize feces within 24 hours" so human waste doesn't transmit disease through a community. Chen plans to use a process of dehydration, filtration and smoldering to render the waste harmless.
• Michael Hoffmann, from the California Institute of Technology, plans to develop a solar-powered toilet. Solar cells generate enough power to process waste and turn it into fuel for electricity.
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