How No-Flush Toilets Can Help Make a Healthier World Cheryl Colopy - Yale Environment 360
go to original April 1, 2013

The Gates Foundation has given millions to this futuristic power-generating toilet from Caltech - with the hope that it can be the solution to sanitation problems around the world. (caltech)

A movement is gaining momentum to do something about this major environmental and public health problem in South Asia and the developing world. The solution, many experts say, is not to invest in western-style flush toilets and centralized sewage systems but rather to develop toilets and decentralized waste-treatment technologies that use far less water. The latest development in this field is the decision by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to invest $40 million in prize money and financial support to groups working on new toilet technology.

The goal of the Gates Foundation and other international and South Asian initiatives is to construct prototypes of inexpensive toilets that use little or no water and minimal energy. The new toilets must convert human waste into useful (or at least benign) components without using septic systems. Most important, they must protect water sources — rivers, streams, and groundwater — from the water-borne diseases so endemic in the developing world.

The stakes are enormous. Water-borne diseases such as typhoid, hepatitis, amoebic dysentery, and garden-variety diarrhea kill 1.5 million people each year, most of them children. Globally, 1.2 billion people — approximately 600 million of them in India — are still defecating in the open, according to a United Nations report.

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