An exhibitor from Loughborough
University demonstrates the use of a toilet during Reinvent The Toilet Fair in
New Delhi, India, Mar. 21, 2014
Associated
Press
About 50
toilets occupied the plush lawns of New Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel over the
weekend. What were they doing there?
After the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put out a call for innovative and
affordable toilets, more than 45 models from 15 countries were displayed this
weekend at the Toilet Fair. The call
was first made in 2011 when the Seattle-based philanthropy fund laid the
world’s sanitation crisis out on a table and summoned those who could reinvent
the toilet to create safe and affordable sanitation.
At the
time, the foundation handed out grants to 16 models presented by universities,
nonprofit and private organizations, for next-generation loos.
In
October, the foundation brought the challenge to India – a country where more
than half the population defecates in the open.
On
Saturday, six of the 100-plus proposals, received grants worth $2 million from
the Gates Foundation and India’s state-run department of
biotechnology. They will use the funding to design models, which
will minimize the use of water and dependency on sewage systems – large parts
of India lack underground sewage networks and access to piped water. They also
hope to convert waste into fertilizer for plants.
For
example, the team from U.K.-based Loughborough University, which won a grant in
2011, designed a lavatory that uses half a liter of water and transforms feces
into biochar. Creating biochar involves a scientific process called
hydrothermal carbonization, which coupled with basic “pressure cooking”
converts not just urine or feces, but waste, such as sanitary napkins and
discarded food into fertilizer.
March 21,
2014 photo, a sample of biochar at the Reinvent The Toilet Fair in New Delhi,
India.
