The initial demand for the reinvented toilet will be in places like schools, apartment buildings, and community bathroom facilities. As adoption of these multi-unit toilets increases, and costs decline, a new category of reinvented household toilets will become available, the Gates Foundation said.
“Our goal is to be at 5 cents a day of cost,” Gates said in a telephone interview before the exhibition. Small-scale waste treatment plants, called omni-processors, may be suited for uses beyond human waste management -- such as for managing effluent from intensive livestock production -- because of its low marginal running costs relative to the value of the fertilizer and clean water it produces, he said.
“The value of those outputs exceeds the operating cost,” Gates said. “So you’ll actually be looking for sources of biomass that keep it fully busy.”
Gates, who with wife Melinda has given more than $35.8 billion to the foundation since 1994, said he became interested in sanitation about a decade ago after he stopped working full time at Microsoft.
“I never imagined that I’d know so much about poop,” Gates said in remarks prepared for the Beijing event. “And I definitely never thought that Melinda would have to tell me to stop talking about toilets and fecal sludge at the dinner table.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.