Bill Gates is getting serious about crap

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is apparently sponsoring research to reinvent the toilet!

I think it's fabulous.

A couple of years back, BBC reported that public sanitation was considered by doctors the best medical advance in over a century. It's really sad that it's not available for a large portion of the world. Toilet technology improvements could really make inroads into that. In particular, the ability to process sewage locally, with minimal access to water infrastructure could make huge improvements in quality of life.

Apart from health considerations, the other big benefit they are looking into is use of raw sewage for energy generation (possibly using the energy for processing the waste, to recover water and minerals). Why should it only be cattle whose waste products produce power?

Putting the Potty to Good Use

Now here is the wave (or perhaps I should say flush) of the future!

The San Antonio Water System is apparently recapturing methane generated during sewage treatment, and selling it to an energy company, to the tune of $250,000 per year.

Now that's probably a drop in the bucket to an organization with a $300,000,000 or so budget, but let's think about it. What were they doing with that methane before? Burning it off. So why not get a free $250K, and use the gas for something useful?

I wonder how our town can get in on the action.