Bill Gates Wants To Reinvent the Toilet

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Bill Gates + toilets + BSOD...I know there is a joke in there somewhere, I'm just too lazy to fish around for it. :)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation held a competition to reinvent the toilet for the 2.5 billion people around the world who don’t have access to modern sanitation. The world's next toilet must operate without running water, electricity or a septic system, not discharge pollutants, preferably capture energy or other resources, and operate at a cost of 5 cents a day.
 
How can it cost to operate at all if you cannot use electricity or running water? WHERE IS THE COST?
 
Sounds like 2.5 billion people around the world need to get to invent modern sanitation before they can install their new toilets.
 
Sounds like 2.5 billion people around the world need to get to invent modern sanitation before they can install their new toilets.

First-worlders can donate their current toilets to third-worlders as we buy these new-fangled Microsoft Toilet. That way everyone has toilets and the world's a better place.

I'm going to wait for the Service Pack though.
 
First-worlders can donate their current toilets to third-worlders as we buy these new-fangled Microsoft Toilet. That way everyone has toilets and the world's a better place.

I'm going to wait for the Service Pack though.

A donated modern toilet is quite literally less useful than a hole in the ground without running water and plumbing.
 
Wonder if they will bring Clippy( that little helper in Win XP) back?

*I see you are trying to wipe your ass, would you like help...

Also wonder if it requires a license and if there are long load times.
 
A donated modern toilet is quite literally less useful than a hole in the ground without running water and plumbing.

I know :-P I was just having fun.

But I'm still going to wait for a service pack.
 
for something that requires no electricity, no water, etc....this already exists, it's called a composting toilet.

The article is talking about using microwaves to turn human waste into whatever, and using solar power via a huge satellite dish looking contraption to turn your waste into electicity.....they are going way overboard.....that does not seem practical at all for a dirt poor country to have these huge devices hooked up to your toilet...how is that low cost, or easy to maintain? :rolleyes:
 
well it might go alongside alternative energy sources based on released gases similar to using cow dung in 3rd world countries for energy sources.

also we cant all just dump our poop in our drinking water and think its great. in milwaukee the amount of energy and money that is needed to keep our water clean from poop is insane.

it makes sense to change 200 year old technology based on 2000 year old technology. plus modern toilettes cause hemroids and killed elvis.
 
Neat idea. Toilet design are old. But without water , all of the home in the world would need drastic changes....
 
SEATTLE — These aren’t your typical loos. One uses microwave energy to transform human waste into electricity. Another captures urine and uses it for flushing. And still another turns excrement into charcoal.

Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm cant wait for the bbq chicken and burger hot off the grill that tastes like shit!
 
Next time on Man vs Wild..
SEATTLE — These aren’t your typical loos. One uses microwave energy to transform human waste into electricity. Another captures urine and uses it for flushing. And still another turns excrement into charcoal.
For some reason it's funnier when Bear Grylls says it.
 
I'm all for the stuff that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working on, but they're taking a global focus when a domestic one is more important. Because I live near Seattle too, I can understand that it's easy to look across the ocean and think, "Hey, there are people on the other side of that in third world nations that could use our help!" We frequently forget, living by the sea, that we also need to look to the southern regions of our own nation to see that people there are living in horrible squalor. Trailer courts and rural communities are scattered everywhere and they lack the basics like education and culture just as much as French Indochina does. Those poor people have cars that are parked in their yards, children playing on them, with no hope of ever having them operate as reliable transportation again. In the rare circumstances when someone actually helps them cut their grass, you can see the flotsam of dead, burnt-out vehicles and old Playskool toys scattered about like any other land torn asunder by wars and stricken with poverty. The last thing those unfortunate people there could use is a redesigned toilet. :(
 
Big Splash Of Death. We've all suffered it :(

Maybe more like Big Splash Of Dookie? :p

Interesting idea, though I fail to see how it could work without water and electricity. Some sort of crazy Rube Golberg-ian contraption?
 
Everyone just needs to start using the three seashells and make fun of Sylvester Stallone when he doesn't "get it".
 
An outhouse costs $0.00 to operate a day, does not discharge anything, does not use electricity, nor does it use running water.
 
There you go spoiling my snide post with actual facts! :p

Haha, well I suppose the mere thought of every home owners having outhouses in my town grossed me out enough to post that. Can you imagine how much a town would stink if John Crapper never came along?
 
those 2.5 billion people only need a shovel, not a toilet.

dig a hole, take a shit, backfill hole, and watch plants grow off your natural fertilizer.
Be one with nature.
 
etoilet.jpg
 
those 2.5 billion people only need a shovel, not a toilet.

dig a hole, take a shit, backfill hole, and watch plants grow off your natural fertilizer.
Be one with nature.

You have to remember, this is 2,500,000,000 people that shit EVERY DAY or close to it.

If all of them simply dug a hole, in no time at all the ground would become like a water bed with a thin layer of ground above a cesspool of old decaying shit.

This solution works if you're out in the woods and need to cover your stench, but in a high density area this is no solution.
 
Haha, well I suppose the mere thought of every home owners having outhouses in my town grossed me out enough to post that. Can you imagine how much a town would stink if John Crapper never came along?

I think it'd be less stinky if John Crapper wasn't doing his business on a daily basis in your town.
 
plus fire and someone's doorstep? I like it.

A local cop disliked by the teenagers in our town recently wound up with a flaming bag of poo on his doorstep, which wound up catching his house on fire, and now there is an arson investigation :p
 
Just dig a bottomless pit and crap in it. Digging bottomless pits would also mean mass employment.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039041233 said:
Crapping straight down to the core of the earth, where the fecal matter is incinerated :p

Exactly! Plus it would have heated seats. I think I just saved the planet...do nobel prizes have nice trophies? (we can apply jointly) :D
 
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