[ad_1]
Billionaire Bill Gates, billionaire philanthropist, placing a pot of droppings on a pedestal next to him, pleaded Tuesday in favor of safely disposing of human waste while he was giving the shot of sending of an exhibition entitled "Reinvented toilets" in China.
"You can guess what's in this beaker – and you'd be right, human feces," said the former CEO of Microsoft's software giant. "This small amount of feces could contain up to 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs."
He went on to say that pathogens like these cause diseases that kill nearly 500,000 children under five every year.
More than 20 companies and academic institutions are showcasing new toilet technologies at the three-day Beijing trade show, ranging from stand-alone toilets to a small standalone waste treatment plant called Omni Processor.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which Gates co-founded with his wife, has spent more than $ 200 million since 2011 to stimulate research and development of safe sanitation technologies.
"The technologies you will see here are the most significant advances in sanitation for nearly 200 years," he said, according to a text from his prepared remarks.
UNICEF estimates that 4.5 billion people around the world do not have access to safe sanitation and 480,000 children under five die each year from diarrhea, mainly in South Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa. There is also an economic cost: poor sanitation facilities cost the world nearly $ 223 billion in 2015, according to a study by Oxford Economics and Japanese toilet manufacturer Lixil.
Gates left the feces exposed for about 10 minutes before removing them, which he said.
[ad_2]
Source link
