In loo of electricity
Posted by British Gas in Solar
You may know him as one of the richest men in the world, and the man behind Microsoft, but since stepping out of the limelight Bill and Melinda Gates have been supporting amazing causes throughout the world, particularly helping those in the developing world through the use of technology, such as solar, to advance their standards of living.
Bill Gates recently presented the California Institute of Technology with $100,000 prize for the work it has been doing on a self-contained, sun-powered toilet system that uses solar panels to break down the waste into hydrogen and electricity!
On his Twitter feed Bill Gates said “4 out of 10 people don’t have a safe way to poop - that’s 2.6 billion!”
The problems caused by this may seem hard for us to imagine in the west but not having somewhere “to go” leads to sanitation problems that cause 1.5 million children under 5 to die each year, Gates said, and the traditional style plumbing and drains can’t be used without the kind of complex infrastructure we have in the west. That’s why innovations such as the sun-powered toilet system are critical to reducing infant mortality rates in the developing world.
You can read more on Bill Gate’s blog http://bit.ly/OuQhOW