- World Economic Forum
Microsoft founder Bill Gates' next project doesn't have much to do with computers, but it does involve new technologies: the water-less toilet and human waste recycling (or upcycling).
Gates and his wife have started this project, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to provide hundreds of thousands in Kenya with access to sanitation facilities — without having to use thousands of gallons of what could be potable water — and clean drinking water over the next five years. Along with funding from the German government, the Gates Foundation aims to find better solutions for sanitation in poor areas, thus reducing the spread of diseases. These "dry toilets" will not need water and will be able to separate excrement from urine in order to dry it.
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2011.
