Og det kan nok være, at forskerne kom op med projekter i denne uge – f.eks et toilet, der omdanner afføring til elektricitet, et med fluelarver som kompostmiddel og et tredje, der genbruger urin.
At a “Re-invent the Toilet” fair, hosted at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation´s campus this week in Seattle, designs included a lavatory that used microwave energy to turn poo (afføring) into electricity, BBC online reports Wednesday.
Another turned excrement into charcoal (trækul), while a third used urine for flushing (til at skylle ud med).
In total 28 designs were shown off at the fair and the winner was a team from California coming up with a toilet that is solar-powered and generates hydrogen gas (brint) and electricity.
The idea was to come up with a toilet that operates without running water, electricity or a septic system. It needs to operate at a cost of no more than five cents (30 øre) a day and will ideally capture energy or other resources.
A British team of scientists showed off a toilet that used black soldier fly larvae (larver) to process (kompostere) waste and create environmen-tally-friendly animal feed (dyrefoder). The toilet is already being field tested in South Africa.
Traditional flush toilets waste tons of drinking water and are often impractical in many areas of the developing world.
The UN estimates that disease caused by unsafe sanitation is responsible for half of the hospitalisations in the developing world. About 1,5 million children die each year from diarrhoeal (diarre) disease.
The Gates Foundation has committed 370 million US dollar to its future toilet initiative and hopes to field test the prototypes within three years, BBC notes.
