Seattle – New Toilet Technology After 150 Years Of Waste

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    Elmer Sayre of the WAND Foundation in the Philippines explores how to close the loop between sanitation, health, and food consumption by testing low-cost dry toilets appropriate for most conditions and using the human waste in small-scale agriculture efforts.Seattle – These aren’t your typical loos. One uses microwave energy to transform human waste into electricity. Another captures urine and uses it for flushing. And still another turns excrement into charcoal.

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    They are part of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation competition to reinvent the toilet for the 2.6 billion people around the world who don’t have access to modern sanitation.

    Scientists from around the world have taken up the challenge and the foundation planned to announced Tuesday which projects would be getting more money to take their ideas from the lab to cities.

    There, local entrepreneurs will use the new technology to turn pollution into cash.

    To pass the foundation’s threshold for the world’s next toilet, it must operate without water, electricity or a septic system, not discharge pollutants, preferably capture energy or other resources and operate at a cost of 5 cents a day.

    The United Nations estimates disease caused by unsafe sanitation results in about half the hospitalizations in the developing world. About 1.5 million children die each year from diarrheal disease.

    Scientists believe most of these deaths could be prevented with proper sanitation, along with safe drinking water and improved hygiene.

    The foundation expects to field test its first prototypes within the next three years.

    Most of the prototypes on display this week in the open courtyard of the foundation’s Seattle headquarters turn solid waste into energy. This is both a practical and pragmatic solution to the solid waste puzzle, said Carl Hensman, program officer for the foundation’s water, sanitation and hygiene team.

    The roughly $42 million project started just about a year ago and Hensman said they decided to hold a toilet fair this week to show how far the scientists have gotten in that time and to give them an opportunity to learn from each other and potentially collaborate.

    Among those scheduled to attend the toilet fair were government ministers from African nations, utility workers and potential financial partners like UNICEF and Oxfam.

    Reinventing the toilet has the potential to improve lives as well as the environment.

    Flush toilets waste tons of potable drinking water each year, fail to recapture reusable resources like the potential energy in solid waste and are simply impractical in so many places.

    “The question is why haven’t we done this before,” Hensman said.

    Online:

    http://www.gatesfoundation.org/watersanitationhygiene/Pages/home.aspx


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    8 Comments
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    Anon Ibid Opcit
    Anon Ibid Opcit
    11 years ago

    This could save a lot of resources and improve sanitation. Sounds like an excellent project.

    moshe1
    moshe1
    11 years ago

    good idea to put the toilets in public places so the city will use the electricity for the street lights…

    lazerx
    lazerx
    11 years ago

    hate to say this, but
    1. where in the middle of the jungle will they find electricity for it?
    2. in the old days, waste was recycled to cess pits and from there routed to fertilize farming fields – no electricity and no maintenance.
    3. it is only we city dwellers that need to do something. In old LA, there was a plant that took waste from the sewer pipes, dried it and sterilized it. It was put into bags and sold as fertilizer. But it was not economical so the plant closed down. (this was about 45 years ago – I visited it right before it closed down – so it can be done!)

    bennym
    bennym
    11 years ago

    It’s all one big pipe dream (pun intended). None of these thing ever pan out, because it can only survive with huge subsidies.

    concerned_Jew
    concerned_Jew
    11 years ago

    sounds like a good idea. I wish them success.

    Moish
    Moish
    11 years ago

    Sounds like a stinky idea. A bunch of toilet talk. Another way to flush more money down the toilet. How will they use microwave enrgy without electricity?
    “it must operate without water, electricity or a septic system, not discharge pollutants, preferably capture energy or other resources and operate at a cost of 5 cents a day,” Impossible!!! That’s my 2 cents on this.

    FmrBklynKid
    FmrBklynKid
    11 years ago

    A microwave toilet. Now you can get a suntan where the sun don’t shine!