Freethought Nation

Inventing a Toilet for the 21st Century

"The fair brought together people from a wide range of disciplines—inventors, designers, investors, advocates, academics, and government officials—all thinking about innovative ways to solve this long-standing problem. While at the fair, I awarded prizes to three universities we challenged a year ago to come up with solutions for capturing and processing human waste and transforming it into useful resources. The winners included: first place to California Institute of Technology in the United States for designing a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity, second place to Loughborough University in the United Kingdom for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water, and third place to University of Toronto in Canada for a toilet that sanitizes feces and urine and recovers resources and clean water. A special recognition was awarded to Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) and EOOS for their outstanding design of a toilet user-interface.

Toilets are extremely important for public health, and – when you think of it – even human dignity. For most of us living in the developed world, we often don’t give them much thought...."