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Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft's billionaire, unveiled a futuristic toilet that does not need water or sewer and uses chemicals to turn human waste into fertilizer.
The mega-rich philanthropist is known for his obsession with the pot with all that is lavatory, after being served the famous "poo water" to prove that sewage could be turned into drinking water.
The toilets are about to go on sale and are the result of research projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest private philanthropy organization in the world.
When Gates announced the new toilet on Twitter, he admitted that he liked to talk about toilets.
What may seem odd until you know that poor sanitation kills half a million children under the age of five each year and costs more than $ 200 billion a year in health care and in income, according to the foundation.
New designs of the new toilet exist, but all work by separating liquid and solid waste.
"Today's toilets simply throw waste into the water, while that toilet does not have a sewer," Gates said.
"They take both liquids and solids and perform chemical work, including burning in most cases."
He compared the transition from traditional toilets to waterless models to a development similar to that of computing at the time of Microsoft's founding in the mid-1970s.
"To the extent that a personal computer is somehow autonomous, not a gigantic thing, we can perform this chemical treatment at the household level," he said.
The Gates Foundation has committed approximately $ 200 million to the washroom project and plans to spend the same amount before the toilets become viable for large-scale distribution.
"This year, the number of toilets will literally be in the 100 while people will still hit the tires (test them)," Gates said.
During a speech in Beijing, Gates waved a clear pot of human stool to illustrate the importance of improving sanitation.
More: Technology
"It's a good reminder that there could be 200,000 billion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs in the pot."
This is the first time the Gates Foundation has addressed an event in China, where President Xi Jinping is calling for a three-year "toilet revolution" to build or modernize 64,000 public toilets by 2020 to boost tourism and economic growth.
Gates said the next phase of the project was to introduce the concept to the manufacturers, adding that he predicted that the toilet market would exceed $ 6 billion by 2030.
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