Bill Gates Wants to Reinvent the Toilet

For the billions of people worldwide without access to safe sanitation, a new approach to the toilet could change lives. Bill and Melinda Gates launched the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge to do just that. They called on global innovators, development banks, corporate partners, sanitation utilities, and governments to work together to create a toilet that removes germs from human waste, recovers resources (such as energy, clean water, and nutrients), operates “off the grid,” operates at a low cost, and promotes sustainability and local economies.

Since the initiative’s inception in 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested at least $200 million to drive research, development, and production of the “next-generation toilet.” Gates said at an expo his foundation hosted that a new approach to waste could save at least half a million lives plus $233 billion annually in costs linked to diseases caused by unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene.

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This story was originally featured in Issue 06 of the Goodnewspaper.

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