You’re about to see Bill Gates drink some water. Clean, delicious, PURE water … that just happened to be poop five minutes earlier. Yeah, poop!
Would you like to learn how poo becomes drinking water?
And then watch a gabazillionaire drink that water?
I thought so.
We’re going to have to talk about poop and science now, so feel free to giggle whenever you need to.
We’ll giggle our way to a better world. TOGETHER.
1. Start with the poo, which we’ll call “sewer sludge.”
2. Burn the water off the poo.
3. Turn the dry poo (or dry sludge) into pathogen-free ash inside an inferno.
4. Process the water vapor, or steam, so it’s nice and clean.
5. Make some electricity while you’re at it! It’s poop-steam-powered electricity, and that’s OK.
6.
7. Make some cleany clean drinking water.
Are you thirsty, Bill?
No problem.
If these guys made it…
…Bill’s drinkin’ it.
The world would be SO different if EVERYONE could just get over the psychological jump it takes to be like, “I’m drinking poop water.” So Bill Gates takes the lead.
Diseases caused by poor sanitation currently kill around 700,000 kids a year, so it makes a ton of sense that we’d want to develop safe and affordable ways to get rid of human waste. It’ll be a while before we see a processor like this used widely, but it *is* gonna launch in a pilot project in Dakar, Senegal, this year to get it all started. Awesome!
The ultimate goal? To make the processors cheap enough that entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries will want to invest in them and then start profitable waste-treatment businesses. It’ll save a ton of lives and help kids grow up healthy, all while making profits. Bam! I’m in, are you? You can read more about it all at Gates Notes.
