[ad_1]
BEIJING – Bill Gates thinks the world needs better toilets.
Specifically, toilets that improve hygiene must absolutely not connect to sewer systems and can turn human waste into fertilizer.
On Tuesday in Beijing, Gates organized the Reinvented Toilet Expo, an opportunity for companies to present their point of view on simple bathroom furniture. Companies have shown toilets that can separate urine from other wastes for more efficient treatment, recycled water for hand washing and solar roofs.
It's not a matter of laughing. About 4.5 billion people – more than half of the world's population – live without access to safe sanitation. Globally, Gates told participants, unsanitary sanitation costs about $ 223 billion a year in the form of higher health costs, lost productivity and wages.
The reinvented lavatories are the result of seven years of research and $ 200 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which former software mogul operates with his wife, since 2011. On Tuesday, Mr. Gates pledged to pay an additional $ 200 million to entice businesses to consider human waste like a big company.
In an interview, Gates said it will "take at least a decade" before reinvented toilets reach tens of millions of people in the poorest areas, and that they will have to be at home. both practical and economical. "No one wants day-to-day solutions" for sanitation, he added.
Mr. Gates presented his case in China in the hope of finding a grateful audience. Second country of the world, the country has improved the daily life of its inhabitants. its once poor population is a top priority. Although it has made great progress in recent years, the sanitation system in China remains deficient in many areas.
According to official figures, more than a quarter of Chinese families still do not have sanitary toilets at home and only about 60% of Chinese rural households have toilets that treat human waste.
Xi Jinping, the country's top leader, called for a "toilet revolution". (Incidentally, the Reinvented Toilet Expo show called "The toilets in the new era" in Chinese.) Having clean toilets, said Xi in 2015, is an important goal of "advancing the revitalization of the countryside ".
Li Shuangxin, a 41-year-old housewife who lives in the suburbs of Beijing, goes several times a day to a hundred meters from her cabin. About 20 people share the "toilet", which is a little over two boards above a mud pit.
"When you do your business, you do not look down," she said. "I'm not satisfied with such a toilet, but you do not really have a choice. Our economic conditions are such. "
But the toilet revolution in China has led to excesses – a problem that critics say could also hurt Gates' efforts.
To win favor with Beijing, local officials tried to outdo each other modern latrines, most of them equipped with flat-screen TVs, Wi-Fi and facial tissue dispensers. (Thieves are known to pull them out with whole rolls.) There were even refrigerators, microwave ovens and sofa beds, pushing the Chinese tourism leader at the time to to instruct officials to control their "five-star toilets" in January and to avoid luxury and luxury.
Even though Tuesday's products were nowhere near as bright, Gates has been criticized for donating thousands of dollars to universities in developed countries to create high-tech toilets that will take years to make money – if ever they do it.
"Sometimes it's necessary to double it, but you have to think about it," said Jason Kass, founder of Toilets for People, a Vermont-based social enterprise that provides off-grid toilets. "Has any of the approaches taken over the past five years created a sustainable, positive and sustainable impact on sanitation? And the answer, as far as I know, is no.
"It might look like the space program where people have fantasies about the colonization of the moon and Mars, but it's really not practical," he said.
Mr. Gates acknowledged that some reinvented toilets, in small quantities, could cost up to $ 10,000, but he added, "This will drop very quickly."
"The hardest thing will be to increase it from $ 2,000 to $ 500," he said. "I would say we're more confident today that it was a good bet than where we started, but we're still not there."
The Gates Foundation announced that the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank would allocate $ 2.5 billion to sanitation projects providing residents of all parts of the city – including neighborhoods with poorer – sanitation services managed safely.
"We see ourselves at the dawn of a sanitation revolution," Gates told attendees of the show.
In a showroom of an art center in Beijing, companies such as Chinese companies Clear, Ecosan and CRRC, US companies Sedron Technologies, Eram Scientific and Blue Diversion Autarky have set up toilets that can separate urine and recycle the water to wash your hands.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Gates stated that he was starting to become interested in sanitation after he stopped working full-time at Microsoft and started traveling more frequently in poor countries with his wife, Melinda.
Holding a beaker of feces, Mr. Gates reminded the public that human waste is disgusting and that it contains 200,000 billion rotavirus cells and 100,000 wormworm eggs, among other bacteria.
Mr. Gates' efforts to incorporate the toilet discussion into society have legitimized a subject that many people have avoided dealing with for decades, said Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, a non-profit organization. based in Singapore, engaged in improving toilets and sanitation. conditions around the world.
"The subject of toilets has been a neglected topic for some time," said Sim. "The Gates Foundation is part of this drive to break the taboo. "
