India Needs Toilets Before It Can Reinvent Them

By Aditi Malhotra   Mar 25, 2014

An exhibitor from Loughborough University demonstrates the use of a toilet during Reinvent The Toilet Fair in New Delhi, India, Mar. 21.

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. 

EricBellmanWSJ and @WSJIndia  Oct 8, 2014 Oct 8, 2014