SEATTLE – These aren't your typical loos. One uses microwave energy to transform human waste into electricity. Another captures urine and uses it for flushing. And still another turns excrement into charcoal.
They are part of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation competition to reinvent the toilet for the 2.6 billion people around the world who don't have access to modern sanitation.
The foundation plans to announce Tuesday which projects will get more money to take their ideas from the lab to urban centers around the world.
To pass the foundation's threshold for the world's next toilet, it must operate without water, electricity or a septic system, not discharge pollutants, preferably capture energy or other resources and operate at a cost of 5 cents a day.
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