Bill Gates brandishes poo to introduce reinvented toilet technology

Bill Gates, a philanthropist and founder of Microsoft, had his hands full on stage Tuesday in Beijing, showing a pot containing human excrement.

The waterfall was part of his speech at the Reinvented Toilet Expo event – a showcase for new toilet technologies.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent more than $ 200 million on field research over the past seven years.

Twenty state-of-the-art sanitation products were on display, designed to destroy harmful bacteria and prevent disease.

"I must say that ten years ago, I would never have imagined to know as much about poo," joked Mr. Gates at the conference. "And I've certainly never thought that Melinda should tell me to stop talking about the toilets and the faecal sludge at the table."

The entrepreneur was participating in the launch of the three-day event in China, during which chief Xi Jinping made the "toilet revolution" across the country a political priority.

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The products presented are intended to revolutionize sanitation technology by operating off-grid to separate liquid and solid waste and eliminate harmful by-products.

"It's no longer a question of whether we can reinvent toilet systems and other sanitation systems," he said. "The question is how fast this new category of off-grid solutions will evolve."

The entrepreneur described the inventions exposed as "the most significant advances in sanitation for nearly 200 years".

Fatal illness

The tech giant pointed out that the stool jar next to it could hold up to 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs.

According to the World Health Organization, 2.3 billion people worldwide still do not have access to basic sanitation facilities.

This can lead to diseases such as cholera, diarrhea and dysentery, which kill hundreds of thousands of people each year.

Addressing the BBC, Mr Gates spoke about the inequities in access to sanitation.

"In rich countries, we have sewers that bring clean water, evacuate some dirty water, and in almost every case, there is a sewage treatment plant," he said. he declared.

"As we have these new cities with a lot of less wealthy people, these sewers have not been built and in fact, it's unlikely that they ever will, so the question is, could you Could you treat human waste without this sewer system? "

The foundation said it hopes that reinvented toilets will first be deployed in buildings such as schools and apartment buildings, before costs are gradually lowering and becoming affordable for households.

"You're only going to pay hundreds of dollars for a toilet – if that's really fantastic, maybe $ 500," Mr. Gates told the BBC.

"You save all the costs of water treatment products, but we have to reduce it by a factor of 10 compared to the models – but this is not unusual for new product markets."

During his trip, Mr. Gates also participated in China's first international import exhibition in Shanghai, at a time of tension between the United States and China.

The two largest economies in the world are engaged in a total trade war against tariffs for much of the year.