Gates Foundation effort is a real “johnny on the spot”

The foundation started by the man who brought the world Windows now wants to do toilets.

A “reinvention” of the toilet is needed to improve worldwide health, says the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A strategy is needed to bring safe and clean sanitation to the world. A lack of such facilities may be taken for granted in the comfort of your nice cozy, little John but a great portion of the world’s population — more than a billion people, according to the foundation — have to “go” in the open or perhaps in the woods like the proverbial bear. That is, if they are lucky and don’t get eaten by a bear or whatever.

“No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation’s Global Development Program. “But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet.”

The foundation isn’t just talking s**t here. Some $42 million is being offered in new sanitation grants that “aim to spur innovations in the capture and storage of waste, as well as its processing into reusable energy, fertilizer, and fresh water.” In addition, the foundation plans to help local communities end open defecation and increase access for a better way to “go,” if you get my drift.

This is no load of crap. The lack of sanitary facilities could help prevent some of the 1.5 million child deaths from diarrheal diseases each year. Investments from the foundation include $3 million in grant funds for the “Reinventing the Toilet Challenge” going out to eight universities across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. A stipulation of the challenge is to reinvent the toilet as a stand-alone unit without piped-in water, a sewer connection, or outside electricity—all for less than 5 cents a day. That would be a sweet though possibly malodorous proposition.

The Gates Foundation has involved itself in a number of worthwhile projects and this one is certainly not at the bottom of the pile. Why this could be the biggest development in sanitary facilities since Thomas Crapper invented the ballcock. I would apologize for the juvenile fecal pun festival, but I must remind you that the folks at the foundation are the ones who brought the subject up.