Anyone familiar with Bill's story knows his efforts are now philanthropy. He and his wife Melinda run the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the express goal of improving conditions worldwide. Massive efforts have been applied to wiping out malaria. New efforts are to build a better shitter. Because, Bill and Melinda Gates truly give a shit.
From here on in we'll be less crude and call it what it is. Improving sanitary condition worldwide through providing better toilet facilities. This is a thing? Yes.
Apparently worldwide, billions of people face unsafe sanitary conditions. This of course leads to disease, even death. About
4.6 billion people, more than half the world's population, are estimated to live without access to safe sanitation.
China in particular, with its population in the billions living in rural settings, suffers from poor access to sanitary conditions. A quarter of Chinese families are considered to lack toilet facilities. Outhouses a hundred yards away from dwellings, with planks of wood and a hole serve clusters of residents.
Reading this reminds of YMCA camp in the 50s, Camp Pratt. You have to remember that the 50s were populated with adults who had either just served in World War II, or were affected by the conflict. I distinctly remember our tent for six boys and a counselor was a U.S. Marine Corps tent, somewhat like what you would see in the show MASH. It was mounted on a platform and served its purpose of keeping us dry.
The prank was that when it rained, if you pressed your finger against the canvas and held it for a while you would create a drip. Creating drips over the counselor's bunk was a given.
The bathroom was called a latrine, and while not 100 yards away, it did require you to go outside to where there was a trough for urine, and planks of wood over holes where you sat and aimed. No partitions between the holes. Conversation and visibility were guaranteed.
Properties in Suffolk County on Long Island in the 60s still had outhouses standing, although they were no longer used for their original function. The doors with the half moon opened to a shed with gardening tools.
China's toilet needs are so acute that they have attracted the Gates Foundation's attention. Bill has sponsored a Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing. The story, was featured in Friday's NYT, complete with photos.
It's always interesting to me that something that I'm thinking about seems to be what others are thinking about at the same time.
Yes, of course we have toilets, but after staying in a hotel with a dual flush option, less water for just urine, more water for poop, I've started to think seriously about installing one in one of our two bathrooms. The shape of the bowl aids the disposal of waste with whatever flush option you choose. Things disappear.
The foundation has apparently already provided $200 million, with another $200 million promised if progress is made to design affordable toilets that do not necessarily need to be hooked up to plumbing. There are prototypes that are solar powered; ones that recycle urine into potable water; ones that turn the solid waste into fertilizer.
Bill doesn't just sit at a desk and forward his money, he actually attends the expo. He holds up a specimen glass jar (sealed) of solid human waste and informs the audience of the germ count in this matter. "Human waste is disgusting, containing 200 trillion rotavirus particles and 100,000 worm eggs. among other organisms." This is certainly why telling someone to "eat shit" is such a naughty thing to say.
There are serious organizations devoted to solving world-wide sanitary problems. There is a Singapore-based World Toilet Organization (the WTO?); the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank have said they could commit $2.5 billion in financing sanitary solutions.
There is even a bit of a gadfly organization, Vermont-based, Toilets for People that provides "off-grid" toilets that is critical of high-tech efforts that never get out there and actually do the job.
Hard to imagine that what we so easily take for granted is so rare in regions of certain countries. And even though you might think there's nothing to improve in our sphere, you can always count on eventually bumping into something new.
Certainly by now you've encountered hands-free faucet and paper towel dispensers in public facilities. Some people are confused by them, but they are becoming more prevalent. The latest innovation in a bathroom facility is the combination hands-free faucet AND hand drying air jet attached to the faucet fixture.
After many years of having the absolute worst men's room in the world on the Amtrak level of Penn Station, the recent renovation has to be marked as an innovative success. Mirrors have been reinstalled over the sinks. The prior renovation removed them and stuck them on the back wall with airblowers.
When I recently went in there I was aware I was hearing the distinctive sound of air blowing something dry. But where were the wall-mounted units that usually made all that noise as you impatiently twirled you hands under the air jet to get them dry.
Turns out at one end of the faucet bar, under the water icon, there is a hands-free faucet that delivers a pre-mixed stream of nearly hot water to wash with. At the other end of this U-shaped faucet bar is the air drying unit under an icon denoting moving air. Thus, every faucet has an air drying unit built in. You no longer have to pick up your stuff and deposit yourself at a wall-mounted unit and let the wind do its thing. One stop hand cleaning.
This is one of the best things I've seen in bathroom design. Bill, if you had anything to do with this, please take a bow.
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