Ronny Chieng talks to Bill Gates about the tech mogul’s global mission to revolutionize toilets, and a scientist demonstrates how poop can be turned into clean drinking water.
Some untreated human waste is in unlined pit latrines that contaminates groundwater around people’s homes. Some is collected manually, or by trucks, and is dumped into nearby fields or bodies of water. And some is collected in sewers but never gets treated. The point is that we are far from the goal the world set in 2015 of everyone using a safely-managed toilet.
To help address this problem, Gates Foundation, worked with partners to develop a small-scale treatment plant to process fecal sludge and biosolids from pit latrines, septic tanks, and sewers. The self-powered technology—which can be located almost anywhere—is called the Omni-Processor. It takes in human waste, kills dangerous pathogens, and converts the resulting materials into products with potential commercial value—like clean water, electricity, and fertilizer. – gatesnotes
Could this be the future of energy and drinkable water in the near future?