Bill Gates, putting his mouth where his money is.....
This week, Bill Gates showed off one of the projects from the Gates Foundation—the Janicki Omniprocessor—which disposes of human waste, creating safe drinking water and electricity in the process. It's rather genius:
Why would anyone want to turn waste into drinking water and electricity?
Because a shocking number of people, at least 2 billion, use latrines that aren’t properly drained. Others simply defecate out in the open. The waste contaminates drinking water for millions of people, with horrific consequences: Diseases caused by poor sanitation kill some 700,000 children every year, and they prevent many more from fully developing mentally and physically.
If we can develop safe, affordable ways to get rid of human waste, we can prevent many of those deaths and help more children grow up healthy.
Pretty cool, eh?