It's time to get our sh!t together and research new sanitation technologies that don't use plumbing, don't produce pollutants and are powered by the sun. It sounds like a lofty goal, but that's exactly what a team of engineers from Caltech did when they won an international challenge to design the "toilet of tomorrow."
At the Reinvent the Toilet Fair held last week in Seattle, the engineers demonstrated a self-contained, solar-powered, electrochemical waste treatment system meant to overcome challenges in water, sanitation and hygiene in developing countries. Clean flush toilets require a lot of infrastructure and fresh water, and nearly 40% of the world's population has access to neither, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The team at Caltech spent a year building their prototypes for a Western-style toilet, squat toilet, and urinal. Their innovation won them the grand prize in a $40 million program initiated by the Gates Foundation, which aims to improve health through safe sanitation.
Check out the full story here.
Via NBC Los Angeles
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(Image and video: Caltech/Michael Hoffmann)
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(I just wish they'd make one that didn't stick out from the wall so far…)
I hope they can now find a way to actually make these affordable to install where they are needed. (And to train people to be tech support, creating some jobs, as well.) Very cool idea. (I had to use a squat toilet in Libya, once -- my Western self was not fond of the experience!)
This is one of those things where you wonder why it wasn't done 100 years ago. I hope they actually get installed. I do wonder about the chemicals needed though. Even a few pennies worth will be hard for many people to acquire.
Amazing. Not a bad system for use in developed countries, too. No need to flush all that drinking water.
@PARNASSUS
I believe the "why wasn't it done 100 years ago" question is partly covered by the "$40 million program initiated by the Gates Foundation" answer. Plus, you know, science and stuff.
Very cool.
Very cool. And the two level part of the design might actually bring new meaning to the idea of "throne."
Three cheers for the Gates Foundation. Another project that is more than a band-aid on a desperate problem.
Hopefully they don't stink as badly as the waterless urinals that are being installed in shopping centres and workplaces more and more these days.
Why is this stupid? My friends on Kauaii have a compost toilet and that seems to be sufficient but this one uses water. That seems more sanitary than throwing saw dust everywhere. I think it's nice.