Bill Gates finances the smart toilet
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation launches a $ 500,000 tender to redesign the toilets. In a world situation of water shortages and with over three hundred thousand deaths a day due to lack of drinking water, it is absurd that this ends up in the toilets drains. The Gates foundation claims it is time to rethink this object we are so used to. Pietro Laureano, founder of IPOGEA, a company founded to promote living in the caves of the Sassi of Matera and president of the Unesco Institute of Traditional Knowledge that was invited to participate in the announcement stated: “In the tradition there are different and more sustainable methods. In Shibam in Yemen, a toilet that divides solids from liquids at origin has been in use for thousands of years so it is easier to treat and recycle them. According to this principle, ceramic water was used in modern homes. With UNESCO we have set up a cabinet for Petra in Jordan that needs absolutely no water. Here the droppings are removed and transformed into special composters. For Bill Gates we want to go even further with the direct transformation into energy and fertilizers. Unfortunately we did not find any Italian company that wanted to do prototype research and we are working with Biosphera on the structure that works for NASA in Arizona ”. It’s a shame because these are the researches that are planning the objects of the future. The awareness that not only we have to rethink the cabinets but the whole method of water and energy management is advancing more and more, reinventing the uses and consumption of nature’s resources more intelligently and without waste.
