Beijing, China — Placing a jar of feces on a pedestal next to him, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates made a plea Tuesday for the safe disposal of human waste as he kicked off a “Reinvented Toilet” Expo in China.
“You might guess what’s in this beaker — and you’d be right.
Human feces,” the former CEO of software giant Microsoft said. “This small amount of feces could contain as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs.”
He went on to say that pathogens like these cause diseases that kill nearly 500,000 children under the age of 5 every year.
More than 20 companies and academic institutions are exhibiting new toilet technologies at the three-day expo in Beijing, from self-contained toilets to a small-scale, self-powered waste treatment plant called the Omni Processor.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that Gates co-founded with his wife has spent more than $200 million since 2011 to stimulate research and development of safe sanitation technology.
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