BY BILL GATES ON JANUARY 5, 2015
I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt and drop into a large bin. They made their way through the machine, getting boiled and treated. A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.
The occasion was a tour of a facility that burns human waste and produces water and electricity (plus a little ash). I have visited lots of similar sites, like power plants and paper mills, so when I heard about this one—it’s part of the Gates Foundation’s effort to improve sanitation in poor countries—I was eager to check it out.
The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle. And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe.
Here’s a short video from my visit in November, which explains how it all works:
El fundador de Microsoft, Bill Gates, ha anunciado en su blog que su fundación financiará una máquina que transforma desechos humanos en agua potable y electricidad. En un vídeo en el que explica el funcionamiento del aparato, llamado Janicki Omniprocessor, aparece él mismo bebiendo un vaso de agua que minutos antes eran heces humanas. Conocido por sus acciones filantrópicas, Gates nos presenta ahora el Janicki Omniprocessor, que toma el nombre de Peter Janicki, el CEO de la empresa de ingeniería Janicki Bioenergy, encargada de desarrollar y construir la máquina. Una máquina que pretende mejorar las condiciones de salubridad de los países menos desarrollados y ‘reciclar’ los desechos humanos en energía y agua potable.