Foundation takes on global sanitation woes

SEATTLE – Bill Gates is turning his penchant for cutting-edge invention on the most unglamorous of devices: the toilet.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is launching a program aimed at “reinventing the toilet,” and providing $42 million in grants to create and test new approaches to improve sanitation in the developing world. The projects were being announced Tuesday at a conference in Rwanda.

The sanitation revolution, which started in the 18th century with the introduction of the flush toilet and sewers, “has saved more lives than any innovation in the history of public health or medical science,” said Frank Rijsberman, director of the foundation’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene initiative.

It also boosted economic growth by reducing waterborne diseases such as cholera and severe diarrhea.

But that transformation reached only one-third of the world, and the problem has only grown worse.

About 40 percent of people still have no access to safe, sanitary toilets, and 1 billion practice open defecation, according to the World Health Organization. Food and water tainted with human waste cause diseases that lead to about 1.5 million deaths of children a year.

The new grants aim to develop affordable latrines, promote sanitation in communities and find new ways to capture and store waste, processing it into energy, fertilizer and even fresh water.

“It’s not a very popular topic,” foundation co-chairwoman Melinda Gates said in a recent interview, “but in terms of really changing people’s lives,” sanitation is fundamental. “You’re not going to build sewers all over the world,” she said. For townships and slums, “it’s too expensive.”

In one project that received funding, a team from Stanford University proposed building a system in Nairobi that would turn human waste into a charcoal used for carbon capture and storage and would process 2 tons of waste daily.

The grants announced Tuesday include:

• $3 million toward a university challenge to develop a toilet that costs less than 5 cents a day without piped-in water, sewer connection or outside electricity;

• $8.5 million for a project with the U.S. Agency for International Development;

• $12 million to the African Development Bank for sanitation-management services;

• $10 million for a project co-funded by the German and Kenyan governments; and $8 million to UNESCO for education programs.