Imagine a toilet that does not need any water to flush your poop, instead, it just turns your poop into ashes. Does this sound futuristic? If yes then that true it is futuristic and revolutionary. But there is already a guy working on this concept. Yes you gotcha, We are talking about Bill Gates. Bill Gates partnered with Samsung to develop a revolutionary toilet. A prototype of a toilet that does not require any water and eventually reduces pollution.
Introduction
As we already know hygiene and sanitation are always major concerns to society, especially in poor and developing countries. So to solve this problem, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiated a challenge to reinvent the toilet in 2011. As a part of the challenge, Bill Gates himself along with the research and development team of Samsung worked on designing and reinventing the toilet.
How does Bill Gates’s Toilet works?
As per reports, the toilet focuses on two areas, one is to convert the solid waste into ashes and the other is to treat and fully recycle the liquid waste.
Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y Lee says that the prototype toilet uses heat to kill the dangerous pathogen that is found in human waste. The solid waste will be dehydrated, removing the liquid in it, and burned into ashes. Liquid waste on the other hand will be treated with a biological purifying process.
Need for change in Toilets?
According to the Bill & Melinda Foundation, Flush toilets have not changed much since it was invented in 1596 by Sir John Harington. Human solid waste contains micro-pollutants and nitrogen that can be very harmful to humans as well as the planet.
Human solid waste is also a factor for various diseases to grow and affect its surroundings. And this issue is mostly faced in poor and developing countries as the sewage is not properly handled.
According to the World Health Organisation, 500K children under the age of 5 year dies due to diarrhoea infections. This is because of poor standards of sanitation and a lack of access to clean water and hygiene.
To overcome such problems and revolutionize the way we treat human waste, a change was needed that Bill Gates aimed for.
Conclusion
Proper sanitation standard and hygiene is much needed for every human. A toilet that turns poop into ashes is a very futuristic idea that turned into reality. This will highly overcome the existing problems of sanitation and hygiene and will also lead to more scopes for future improvement.
