The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced last year that they will be giving away more than $42 million to help fund and develop new, innovative toilets. These toilets can be used for the developing world who currently do not have access to any sort of sanitary toilet situation.
The winning design in the Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet project was announced Tuesday at an exposition funded by the Foundation grant in Seattle. Innovative designs included a toilet that used microwave energy and turned poo into electricity. Another turned feces into charcoal and a third used urine to flush instead of water.
There were 28 designs shown at the fair and the winner of $100,000 was California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Their design was a solar powered unit generated by hydrogen gas and electricity.
The project challenged designers to come up with an innovative toilet that operates without running water, a septic system or electricity. It also needed to work at a cost of no more than five cents a day as well as be energy efficient.
Bill Gates said at the fair in Seattle, "Toilets are extremely important for public health, and, when you think of it, even human dignity. The flush toilets we use in the wealthy world are irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population, because they often don't have access to water, and sewers, electricity, and sewage treatment systems."
Other toilets at the event included London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine's toilet that used black soldier fly larvae to process the waste and create animal feed. This toilet is currently being field tested in South Africa.
Loughborough University in the UK, took home $60,000 in second place with their design that produced bio-charcoal, minerals and clean water. University of Toronto came in third and received $40,000 with their toilet that sanitizes waste and uncovers functional resources.
For most of the developing world, flush systems are impractical and waste water. Diseases caused by unsafe sanitation result in half of the hospitalisations in the developing world, The UN estimates. The foundation also announced a second round of grants totaling $3.4 million.
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