WORLD NEWS OF ARCHITECTURE
ARCHI TIMES PUBLISHED BY THE PROFESSIONALS FOR THE PROFESSIONALS
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HERITAGE WALK Photography Competition: Rich Architectural Heritage
CONFERENCE Conference on Regional Challenges & Sustainable Solution
Vol. 34, No. 11 ISSN No. 2073-9001
November 2018 News and Commentary of the Profession....
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HOW BILL GATES AIMS TO SAVE $233 BILLION BY REINVENTING THE TOILET
ARCHITECTURE World Architecture Day Celebrated in Islamabad
SHAUKAT NAWAZ RAJA
BY JASON GALE
AQEEL AHMED TALKING ENGINEERING
Bill Gates thinks toilets are a serious business, and he’s betting big that a reinvention of this most essential of conveniences can save a half million lives and deliver $200 billion-plus in savings. The billionaire philanthropist, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent $200 million over seven years funding sanitation research, showcased some 20 novel toilet and sludgeprocessing designs that eliminate harmful pathogens and convert bodily waste into clean water and fertilizer. “The technologies you’ll see here are the most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years,” Gates, 63,
told the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing. Holding a beaker of human excreta that, Gates said, contained as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder explained to a 400-strong crowd that new approaches for sterilizing human waste may help end almost 500,000 infant deaths and save $233 billion annually in costs linked to diarrhea, cholera and other diseases caused by poor water, sanitation and hygiene. One approach from the California Institute of Technology that Gates said he finds “super interesting”
integrates an electrochemical reactor to break down water and human waste into fertilizer and hydrogen, which can be stored in hydrogen fuel cells as energy. ‘Substantial Market’ Without cost-effective alternatives to sewers and wastetreatment facilities, urbanization and population growth will add to the burden. In some cities, more than half the volume of human waste escapes into the environment untreated. Every dollar invested in sanitation yields about $5.50 in global economic returns, according to the World Health Organization. “Human waste that is properly handled can be a very economically attractive investment
due to the health benefits,” said Guy Hutton, a senior adviser for water, sanitation and hygiene with Unicef in New York, in an interview. “Given the unmet need of 2.3 billion people still without basic sanitation, there is a potentially very substantial market and economic gain to be had.” The reinvented toilet market, which has attracted companies including Japan’s LIXIL Group, could generate $6 billion a year worldwide by 2030, according to Gates. ‘Golden Opportunity’ “Innovative companies have a golden opportunity to do well by doing good,” LIXIL President Kinya Seto said in a statement.
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