In Beijing today, Bill Gates spoke at a conference with a fantastic name: the Reinvented Toilet Expo. The Microsoft founder took with him to the lectern a sealed jar containing human feces, according to BBC News. Gates reportedly pointed to the poop jar and said that it could contain “as many as 200 trillion rotavirus…20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs.”
Gates's stunt was conceived to draw attention to the need for sanitary, off-grid toilets that can remove harmful byproducts from human waste, which helps to stop the spread of disease among the two billion people who don't have access to clean sanitation. The expo, which was the culmination of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiative called Reinvent the Toilet, featured 20 toilet designs developed by companies from around the world, most of which used clever engineering to separate solid and liquid waste safely and without odor.
