CB BureauWith an aim to encourage new ideas and approaches to accelerate safe and affordable access to sanitation for everyone, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing $42 million in new grants.
The grant will fund toilet innovations, including research into new methods of capturing, storing, and processing waste into fertilizer, energy, and drinkable water. The lack of sanitation infrastructure in many parts of the world means that the foundation will work to develop waterless and hygienic toilets that do not rely on sewer lines.
‘Flush toilets are out of reach for a huge majority of the developing world. And yet, no other innovation has done more to save lives and improve sanitation in the last 200 years,’ said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global development programme, at the AfricaSan conference in Rwanda early this week.
‘But the sanitation revolution did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches, new ideas,’ said Burwell.
Media reports say that the foundation is getting help from eight universities around the world to develop a standalone unit without piped-in water or electricity that will turn waste into energy, clean water, or nutrients.
It is worth mentioning here that about 2.6 billion people lack access to a proper toilet or latrine, and about 1.5 million children die each year from preventable diarrhoeal disease, the foundation said.
As part of its 2015 Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations seeks to cut in half the number of people who do not have access to basic sanitation.