Hasta La Ideas

For those of you living in developed nations, no matter how nice or crappy your apartment is, it has a toilet in it. And whether it’s manufactured by American Standard or Toto, the basic flushing mechanism is based on 18th-Century technology and uses water. Looking over your computer, your TiVo or all of your hi-tech kitchen appliances, you could say your bathroom is the most low-tech area of your home.

Many of those living in developing nations lack even that luxury, a 200-year-old bathroom device that flushes into a sewage or septic system. It’s 2011 and there are still roughly 2.6 billion Earthlings who (if you’ll excuse the language) shit into trenches or in other unhygienic conditions. It’s hardly a glamorous design problem to solve so it gets little press, though the stakes are life and death. (Click here to read about a typical developing nation village where basic sanitation and hygiene are a challenge.) According to this article, “The sanitation revolution, which started in the 18th century with the mass introduction of the flush toilet and sewers, has saved more lives than any other innovation in the history of public health or medical science.“

Thankfully the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is tackling the problem with their Reinvent the Toilet Challenge:

The Water, Sanitation & Hygiene program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently challenged 22 universities to submit proposals for how to invent a waterless, hygienic toilet that is safe and affordable for people in the developing world and doesn’t have to be connected to a sewer. Eight universities were awarded grants to “reinvent the toilet.”

While images, video and detailed explanations of the eight grant awardees has not yet been made public, the Foundation has released briefs describing each. Hit the jump to check them out.

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