The reinvented toilet market? Disrupters are everywhere

My husband’s Uncle Bill was born in 1910. He was raised on a tobacco farm in Western Mass that, during his childhood, lacked the comfort of indoor plumbing. When someone would start rhapsodizing about the good old days, Bill would immediately bring up frigid morning trips to the outhouse.

Worse than an outhouse, of course, is no outhouse. In my younger days, I did a bit of camping, so I’m quite familiar with relieving yourself in nature. It’s actually okay when the whether is perfect, it’s light out, and you’re able to be quick about it. If not…

Anyway, I definitely come down on the side of a clean toilet in a well-lit room.

As anyone who’s ever plumbed a bowl or changed the out the floating ball and chain gizmo in the tank can attest, the technology hasn’t changed all that much over the years.

Sure, there are those super-flush toilets that have all kinds of involved gear in them that cost a lot of money and a lot more money to repair. Then there are smart toilets that flush themselves. Special settings for Number 1 and Number 2. And heated seats. But basically it’s activate flush, waste out, water back in the ready.

I do remember the Clivus Multrum, a composting indoor toilet from Sweden. In the late 1960’s/early 1970’s, Abby Rockefeller of the Rockefeller family was a proponent and, I think, introduced them in the U.S. I was vaguely aware of this because my sister Kath was an acquaintance of Abby, who was a local feminist big-wig.

Can’t remember where, but I actually used a Clivus Multrum recently. It was weird, but I do take their word that this approach is more environmentally friendly than trad plumbing.

Abby Rockefeller isn’t the only philanthropist involved in toiletry.

Bill Gates, it seems, has turned his considerable brain and fortune to this necessity.

….he’s betting big that a reinvention of this most essential of conveniences can save a half million lives and deliver $200 billion-plus in savings.

The billionaire philanthropist, whose Bill & Ms neceselinda Gates Foundation spent $200 million over seven years funding sanitation research, showcased some 20 novel toilet and sludge-processing designs that eliminate harmful pathogens and convert bodily waste into clean water and fertilizer.

“The technologies you’ll see here are the most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years,” Gates, 63, told the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing on Tuesday. (Source: Bloomberg)

The Reinvented Toilet Expo, huh? Sounds like that might have been a bit more interesting and worthwhile than most/all of the tech expos I participated in over the years.  (At one such expo, I was waiting for a cab and who walked by but Bill Gates. He was getting into a hired car. Maybe I should have asked if I could hitch a ride to O’Hare with him.)

I have next to no experience in countries mired in poverty and with poor plumbing.

But what I saw on a day-trip to Tijuana in 1972, open running sewers are pretty terrible. Offal/awful.

The world – in which 2.3 billion people live without access to basic sanitation -  needs alternatives to creating expensive infrastructure (sewers, piping, waste-treatment facilities). And Clivus Multrums are far too expensive.

So it’s a good thing that researchers and companies are reinventing the toilets.

“Our goal is to be at 5 cents a day of cost,” Gates said in a telephone interview before the exhibition. Small-scale waste treatment plants, called omni-processors, may be suited for uses beyond human waste management -- such as for managing effluent from intensive livestock production -- because of its low marginal running costs relative to the value of the fertilizer and clean water it produces, he said.

“I never imagined that I’d know so much about poop,” Gates said in remarks prepared for the Beijing event. “And I definitely never thought that Melinda would have to tell me to stop talking about toilets and fecal sludge at the dinner table.”

Fecal sludge? Bet it’s more interesting table convo than the glories of MultiPlan (Microsoft’s early spreadsheet) or fun with screen beans.

And so much better for the world.

Thank you, Bill Gates. The world may not be a better place thanks to Microsoft – the jury’s out on net-improvements to my life - but it will be if we can figure out how to reinvent sanitation so that our poor fragile planet can support billions more pee-ers and poopers.