Did you know that all over the world, there are as many as 2.5 billion people who have no access to safe sanitation? This includes around 1 billion people who have no plumbing mechanisms and 1 million people to utilize pit latrines. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working to make that better, one competition at a time.
The Reinvent the Toilet Fair is aimed at bringing brilliant inventors together to create plumbing and safe water solutions that are applicable in all kinds of areas. These folks aren’t trying to make the best commercial bathroom sinks or walk in bathtubs with shower. They are, instead, looking to expand the definition of a modern toilet so that all kinds of infrastructures can have safe, healthy places to dispose of bodily waste.
After all, it took a lot of inventors to get developed nations where we are now. The first American toilet patent was called the “plunger closet,” and was granted in 1857. By 1907, Thomas MacAvity Stewart of Saint John, New Brunswick, made a vortex flushing toilet that cleaned itself as it flushed. This is more like the commercial toilets we use today. Finally, we arrive to the toilets of today. Today, toilets use less than half the water for each flush than they did just 50 years ago. Nearly all toilets offer a self-cleaning swirl and most are connected to either a sewage line or a septic tank that breaks down waste using bacteria.
The work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is particularly important because proper disposable of bodily waste helps people live healthy, disease-free lives. Developing nations don’t want walk in bathtubs with shower or fancy sinks. They just want safe, reliable ways to dispose of waste.
