For example I think it could be a great fit in India, where there are lots of entrepreneurs who could own and operate the processors, as well as companies with the skill to manufacture many of the parts. If things go well in Senegal, we’ll start looking for partners in the developing world. Hopefully, these early steps will help us make sure the Omniprocessor doesn’t join the list. The history of philanthropy is littered with well-intentioned inventions that never deliver on their promise.

They will also test one of the coolest things I saw on my tour: a system of sensors and webcams that will let Janicki’s engineers control the processor remotely and communicate with the team in Dakar so they can diagnose any problems that come up. The next step is the pilot project later this year, Janicki will set up an Omniprocessor in Dakar, Senegal, where they’ll study everything from how you connect with the local community (the team is already working with leaders there) to how you pick the most convenient location. We still have a lot to learn before we get to that point.

Our goal is to make the processors cheap enough that entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries will want to invest in them and then start profitable waste-treatment businesses. It’s really amazing to see how they’ve embraced the work founder Peter Janicki and his family have traveled to Africa and India multiple times so they can see the scope of the problem. Our foundation is funding Janicki to do the development. If we get it right, it will be a good example of how philanthropy can provide seed money that draws bright people to work on big problems, eventually creating a self-supporting industry. The next-generation processor, more advanced than the one I saw, will handle waste from 100,000 people, producing up to 86,000 liters of potable water a day and a net 250 kw of electricity.

In other words, it powers itself, with electricity to spare. Through the ingenious use of a steam engine, it produces more than enough energy to burn the next batch of waste. That means they use a lot of energy, which makes them impractical in most poor countries. Others burn it using diesel or some other fuel that they buy. government.īefore we even started the tour, I had a question: Don’t modern sewage plants already incinerate waste? I learned that some just turn the waste into solids that are stored in the desert. The machine runs at such a high temperature (1000 degrees Celsius) that there’s no nasty smell in fact it meets all the emissions standards set by the U.S. If they took it to the Omniprocessor instead, it would be burned safely. Either way, it often ends up in the water supply. Today, in many places without modern sewage systems, truckers take the waste from latrines and dump it into the nearest river or the ocean-or at a treatment facility that doesn’t actually treat the sewage. The Omniprocessor is a safe repository for human waste. I recently went to Janicki’s headquarters to check out an Omniprocessor before the start of a pilot project in Senegal. The project is called the Omniprocessor, and it was designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north of Seattle. One idea is to reinvent the toilet, which I’ve written about before.Īnother idea-and the goal of the project I toured-is to reinvent the sewage treatment plant. So a few years ago our foundation put out a call for new solution. Western toilets aren’t the answer, because they require a massive infrastructure of sewer lines and treatment plants that just isn’t feasible in many poor countries. If we can develop safe, affordable ways to get rid of human waste, we can prevent many of those deaths and help more children grow up healthy. The waste contaminates drinking water for millions of people, with horrific consequences: Diseases caused by poor sanitation kill some 700,000 children every year, and they prevent many more from fully developing mentally and physically. Why would anyone want to turn waste into drinking water and electricity?īecause a shocking number of people, at least 2 billion, use latrines that aren’t properly drained.

Shit wasted meme