The co-founder of Microsoft has made it his mission to save the
planet in his retirement through his philanthropic work with the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. Now, the husband and wife team are backing
a pilot project that hopes to turn human faeces into clean drinking
water in some of the poorest regions of the world.
Video from "Gatesnotes" shows Gates, listed by Forbes as 2014's richest person in the world with a net worth of $76 billion, drinking a glass of water created by the Janicki Omniprocessor.
The
machine, designed by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north
of Seattle, burns human waste and produces water and electricity, as
well as ash.
Gates writes: "I watched the piles of faeces go up the conveyer belt
and drop into a large bin. They made their way through the machine,
getting boiled and treated. A few minutes later I took a long taste of
the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.
"The water
tasted as good as any I've had out of a bottle. And having studied the
engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It's that
safe.
Sipping the water handed to him, Gates says jokingly, "It's water!"
The
current machine can handle waste from 100,000 people and produce up to
86,000 liters of water a day and 250 kw of electricity.
Gates stresses that over two billion people do not have access to safe
sanitation. For many across the globe, latrines are not drained properly
and others defecate in the street. Often, the waste contaminates the
drinking water. The result? Gates says that poor sanitation kills
700,000 children every year.
"If we can develop safe, affordable ways to get rid of human waste, we
can prevent many of those deaths and help more children grow up
healthy."
Gates is now funding the Janicki Omniprocessor's pilot in Dakar,
Senegal, which will test how the machine can work with a local
community. Gates writes that if it is a success, they will look for
other countries to use the scheme, such as India, where Gates believes
lots of entrepreneurs could own and operate the machine.
Commenting on the project, Gates concluded, "It’s the ultimate example of that old expression: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure".
Culled from ...TheIndependent
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