Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

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giantsteen
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Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by giantsteen »

(CNN) -- The toilet is broken -- and not because it won't flush.

This unsightly piece of technology, which everyone uses but no one seems to think much about, is in desperate need of an overhaul, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which launched a challenge to "reinvent the toilet."

The foundation announced $41.5 million worth of grants on Tuesday aimed at getting someone to reengineer the flushing porcelain pot, which has been in use since the 1700s.

"No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet," Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation's global development program, said in a statement. "But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet."

So what exactly is wrong with the current commode?

It's too expensive for people in the developing world; it requires water and a sewer-system hook-up, which aren't always available; and it does nothing to actually treat human waste, said Frank Rijsberman, the foundation's director of water sanitation and hygiene.

"We like the toilet. It was invented in 1775, saved millions of lives," he said. "At the same time, it didn't reach two-thirds of the world's population."

So it's high time for an update, he said.

About 2.5 billion people don't have access to toilets as we've currently imagined them, and this lack of toilet access encourages the spread of diarrheal diseases, which are blamed for the deaths of 1.5 million children each year, according to the World Health Organization.

"We want to look at waste as a resource and recycle it," Rijsberman said. "We think we can recycle the energy, the minerals and also the water. We want to reinvent the toilet that is cheap, that doesn't cost more than a few pennies, that poor people want to use and that will recycle minerals, energy and water."

The Gates Foundation has given out eight grants (here's the list as a PDF) to universities that are trying to dream up a toilet 2.0.

Here are a few of the most striking ideas from those grantees:

• Andrew Cotton, from Loughborough University in the UK, is making a toilet that will "recover water and salt from feces and urine."

• Georgios Stefanidis, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, is working on a toilet that will generate electricity from waste, which will be "gasified into plasma" using microwaves. That gas can be used to generate electricity, according to the proposal.

• Yu-Ling Chen, from the University of Toronto, is trying to make a toilet that will "sanitize feces within 24 hours" so human waste doesn't transmit disease through a community. Chen plans to use a process of dehydration, filtration and smoldering to render the waste harmless.

• Michael Hoffmann, from the California Institute of Technology, plans to develop a solar-powered toilet. Solar cells generate enough power to process waste and turn it into fuel for electricity.

The Gates Foundation warns that none of these efforts constitutes a "silver bullet" that would solve the world's sanitation problems and says new toilet designs must be pursued in tandem with better wastewater treatment and sanitation systems.

Some efforts to remake the toilet have gone down the tubes.

"There have been a lot of toilet projects out there and a lot of failures," Marla Smith-Nilson, executive director of Water 1st International, told The Seattle Times.

But the Gates Foundation remains hopeful that "radical innovation" can help.

The universities that received funding are expected to have working prototypes within a year, and the foundation expects some of the projects to be ready for rollout in three or four years, Rijsberman said.

Although these redesigned toilets are targeted at third-world countries, some of these ideas would be helpful in United States and Europe, too, Rijsberman said, especially in addressing water shortages.

"How much sense does it make to clean up water to drinking water standards and then flush it down with sewage in an expensive pipe system?" he said. "We think modern science and technology can produce something that is more like the cell phone of sanitation."
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation ... l?iref=NS1
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by Windows 8 Beta Fan »

OMG hes will be rich cause of new stuff until the day he dies *hehe*
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by xXxWindows8_FANxXx »

how stupid
bill gates must be bored
come back and imporve windows and computers .
geesh .
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by Windows 8 Beta Fan »

xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:how stupid
bill gates must be bored
come back and imporve windows and computers .
geesh .
exacty!
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by EPPM »

Windows 8 Beta Fan wrote:
xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:how stupid
bill gates must be bored
come back and imporve windows and computers .
geesh .
exacty!
I read on somewhere that he is really happy working on his foundation and that he will not return to MS.
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by xXxWindows8_FANxXx »

and his new foundation is doing ?
making new toilets .
how revolutionary !!!
why ? why do we need a new toilet ?
no . computers , technology - its what we need . not this . not this ...
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by DMax »

no . computers , technology - its what we need . not this . not this ...
We have those already and people working on those and we want many new technologies, not need them (some are a necessity though). If you lived in one of those poorer places that didn't have a toilet (as mentioned and the reason for this) and you just went where ever you could, would you feel the same?

Well if you think about it, the toilet is really the only technological thing that hasn't advanced (practically everything else used a lot, has since its been created: lightbulbs, vacuum cleaner, telephone, music players, televisions, computers, maps, lawnmowers, mechanical tools, toasters, microwaved cars, you name it, its changed or advanced, more often for the better in many ways.. and if this too could advance and also could be used to create energy too or be useful for more than taking our waste away, then why not have this?

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by betaluva »

what happens when it bluescreens? ( maybe that should be brownscreens. lol )
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by Barabba »

lol
did you guys read some of the "ideas" written there?

laffed at every one of them
its like watching some C rated comedy with bunch of idiots in some firm that is desperate to "invent" something
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by voyager8907 »

xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:and his new foundation is doing ?
making new toilets .
how revolutionary !!!
why ? why do we need a new toilet ?
no . computers , technology - its what we need . not this . not this ...
Why do we need a new toilet?
Because the toilet needs an upgrade.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by evangelikevin »

Barabba wrote:lol
did you guys read some of the "ideas" written there?

laffed at every one of them
its like watching some C rated comedy with bunch of idiots in some firm that is desperate to "invent" something
Did you really THINK about some of the ideas written there? Or are you just pathologically insulting of anything you don't understand? A toilet that can sanitize waste could help eliminate diseases. A toilet that can filter water from urine and feces could provide safe drinking water (yes, I said SAFE, they use it on the ISS already) for a village. And humans have been using feces as fuel for thousands of years. It's about time we started using our OWN.
Yawn.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by Barabba »

now I'm gonna laff at you

thanks for making my day
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Les Grossman: Or you can grow a conscience in the next 5 minutes and see where that takes you.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by Andrew Tapferke »

Yeah, Microsoft Toiletz…

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by spunker88 »

He does have a point about the water. But that would take a lot of infrastructure work to run different water lines that are non drinkable. Most people won't want to bathe or wash their hands in water that is non-drinkable even though it would be fine for that. So running separate water just for toilets hasn't been worth it yet. But if you could create some sort of sewage reclaim system in larger buildings, etc that filters the water so its usable in toilets it may be worth it. But for a single household its probably not.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by FoobyZeeky »

Heh, I'm imagining an internet-connected toilet covered in touchscreens now for some reason.
sup

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by XDude »

xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:how stupid
bill gates must be bored
come back and imporve windows and computers .
geesh .

You're stupid. The article is about the fact that third world country don't have toilets. This product is not aim towards tech geeks like you. This is charity efforts to improve living conditions in places where people are too poor to afford basic needs. We need more of Bill Gates type people and less of you. I find you're comment very insulting.

Not everyone has the fortune to afford a computer, that's way off limit to more than half the population of the world.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by evangelikevin »

XDude wrote:
xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:how stupid
bill gates must be bored
come back and imporve windows and computers .
geesh .

You're stupid. The article is about the fact that third world country don't have toilets. This product is not aim towards tech geeks like you. This is charity efforts to improve living conditions in places where people are too poor to afford basic needs. We need more of Bill Gates type people and less of you. I find you're comment very insulting.
THANK YOU!!!! I knew I wasn't the only one who saw the point. Also, Windows8_Fan, Bill Gates was a business major. He doesn't know much about programming or hardware design, so HE wouldn't be of ANY benefit in improving Windows or computers.
Yawn.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

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XDude wrote:
xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:how stupid
bill gates must be bored
come back and imporve windows and computers .
geesh .

You're stupid
agreed, gates does not work for windows divizion

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by FoobyZeeky »

Andrew Tapferke wrote:
XDude wrote:
xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:how stupid
bill gates must be bored
come back and imporve windows and computers .
geesh .

You're stupid
agreed, gates does not work for windows divizion
Not only that, but he's doing a good thing for people with fewer privileges and opportunities, and a poorer life, than us.
sup

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by lXxSkyfirexXl »

Ok now if these toliets ran windows that would be beyond the unexepted, but he is doing something good for people.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by E10Style »

"The toilet is not responding. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL"

Seriously, Bill needs to continue with this project. Its very important for the humanity.
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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by Windows XP »

xXxWindows8_FANxXx wrote:and his new foundation is doing ?
making new toilets .
how revolutionary !!!
why ? why do we need a new toilet ?
no . computers , technology - its what we need . not this . not this ...
I see you are not happy without a computer.
FoobyZeeky wrote:Heh, I'm imagining an internet-connected toilet covered in touchscreens now for some reason.
What about the iToilet? *hehe*
Inactive. I also don't have anything ROBLOX-related, anymore. Please don't ask.

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by DMax »

FoobyZeeky wrote:Heh, I'm imagining an internet-connected toilet covered in touchscreens now for some reason.
Yeah :D how about a "Touch seat", warms your butt when you sit down? Program your name into it and it greets you first thing in the morning and tests the air temp and warms up the seat in cold mornings. Uses some sort of ID to identify who is sitting on the seat and says things like "good morning/afternoon/evening (whatever time of day it is) welcome [your name here] I look forward to taking your waste." and when your done "thank you, have a nice day" (Insert xylophone end jingle here)

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by FoobyZeeky »

DMax wrote:
FoobyZeeky wrote:Heh, I'm imagining an internet-connected toilet covered in touchscreens now for some reason.
Yeah :D how about a "Touch seat", warms your butt when you sit down? Program your name into it and it greets you first thing in the morning and tests the air temp and warms up the seat in cold mornings. Uses some sort of ID to identify who is sitting on the seat and says things like "good morning/afternoon/evening (whatever time of day it is) welcome [your name here] I look forward to taking your waste." and when your done "thank you, have a nice day" (Insert xylophone end jingle here)
"Your business is appreciated." [/portalreference]
sup

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Re: Bill Gates wants to reinvent the toilet too!

Post by voyager8907 »

Windows XP wrote: What about the iToilet? *hehe*
Well sounds like there will be some competition between Apple with the iToilet and Microsoft eith the Microsoft Toilet (Now with Windows 8!).

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