![]() ![]() Here's how the toilet works: After the user is done, the seat's hinge turns a set of gears when the seat is put down, opening the bottom of the bowl and squeegeeing it. The toilet is currently being tested in Ghana. In 2016, the foundation received a second grant of nearly $5 million. One of the designs receiving the most recognition from the expo is the Nano Membrane Toilet - a design Gates' foundation has backed since 2012, when they invested over $700,000 to its developers at Cranfield University in England. Gates went further, saying the inventions being displayed at the showcase were the "most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years". ![]() "It's a question of how quickly this new category of off-grid solutions will scale." "It's no longer a question of if we can reinvent the toilet and other sanitation systems," said Gates. The 20 reinvented toilets they showcased at the event were all created to destroy harmful bacteria and prevent disease by separating liquid and solid waste all without being connected to water supply or sewer systems, the foundation states. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested over $200 million in research to improve sanitation technologies since 2011 and announced they plan to contribute another $200 million to continued research and development, according to a press release from the expo. (MORE: How the 2011 Japanese Tsunami and Earthquake Sparked an Algae Invasion in the Pacific Northwest) Lack of facilities can cause diseases such as cholera, diarrhea and dysentery, which kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. ![]() 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs," the BBC reported.Īround the world, more than 2.3 billion people still don't have access to basic sanitation facilities and the untreated waste from millions ends up in the environment, including bodies of water, according to the World Health Organization. ![]() Gates held the presentation at the appropriately named "Reinvented Toilet Expo" in Beijing, China, this week, using a sealed jar of human feces as a prop to show that just a small amount of human waste could contain "as many as 200 trillion rotavirus. The toilets could help prevent diseases for the more than 2 billion people that don't have access to clean sanitation systems and reduce the environmental impact of human waste. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' foundation recently hosted an event displaying 20 futuristic toilets that need no connection to water or sewage systems and turn human waste into fertilizer, a technological advancement Gates is hailing as one of the "most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years." ![]()
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