Source: Big Think
Bill Gates wants to revolutionize the toilet, and he is not doing it because he is worried about the effects of eating the dishes that people are posting on Gordon Ramsay’s Twitter. In fact, Bill is trying to address an issue that affects over 2 billion people worldwide and kills more children than malaria, measles, and AIDS combined .
Access to clean water is a serious problem, and unsanitary living conditions cause a whopping 88% of deaths around the globe. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet Challenge aims to address this by creating new ways to deal with toilet waste that don’t rely on complicated plumbing . Chemical solutions are the best way to deal with this problem as there is little to no chance that expensive infrastructure projects will take place in the parts of the world that suffer from unsanitary conditions the most.
The foundation has already awarded many grants and currently has a project being tested in Ghana . There is no doubt that if Gates can, in fact reinvent the toilet many lives will be saved. Next time you go to the toilet during the ad break take a second to think about what life would be like if you could not simply flush away all your toilet waste.
That is it for Tech Away’s this week, so there is just one thing left to do. Gordon, what did you think of this week’s Tech Aways?