If you live in a developed country with access to running water, you probably don’t give too much thought to where your poo goes. You do your business, flush the toilet, and then it becomes someone else’s problem. However, in developing countries, sanitation can a big problem.However, a company based in New Zealand is hoping to solve that problem by creating a toilet that will microwave your poo until it disappears, thus solving the issue of running water and where to dispose of your waste. The company, dubbed Scion, is being funded by none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who have in the past also helped fund the project that turned human waste into actual drinkable water.
The process of vaporizing your poo is known as wet oxidation, which takes your waste, puts it under pressure, add oxygen, and heat it till it gets to 200 degrees celsius. This eventually turns it into carbon dioxide and water. This isn’t a new technique as wet oxidation is being used in the mining and sewage treatment industry, but in this instance, Scion is hoping to bring it into homes.
According to Daniel Gapes, one of the engineers working on the project, “We get to flush here and it gets out of our household and treated and discharged into the environment and we’re removed from the issue so we don’t have to handle it personally or live amongst it. In a large part of the developing world that’s not the case. Their proximity to their waste is constant and the risk of disease is high.”