In 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation issued a challenge to reinvent the toilet. If you haven’t spent much time thinking about toilets lately, you may be wondering why the toilet would even need reinventing in the first place.
Here’s the problem: There are currently 2.6 billion people in the world who do not have access to affordable, safe, sanitation facilities. This leads to devastating health and environmental impacts. The solution might seem simple. Let’s give these people toilets! Well, hold on a minute. The toilets that we have become so familiar with require immense infrastructure and large amounts of water, two things that are not abundant in developing nations.
Check out the Gates Foundation video below for the whole story.
Many people are familiar and comfortable with composting paper, kitchen scraps, and yard waste. A concept the most people may not be so comfortable with is composting human waste. The process of composting destroys pathogens in human waste, preventing them from ending up in the water supply and making people sick. In communities without access to running water or water treatment facilities, composting toilets have been used to improve sanitation and greatly reduce the presence of water-borne disease. Since they use no water to operate, they are a great option for communities where water is scarce.