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SEOUL, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Electronics giant Samsung and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have developed a concept toilet that can manage human waste without relying on the sewage disposal system. The effort began in 2019 when Samsung Electronics joined the Gates Foundation to try to literally reinvent the toilet by applying new technologies to various prototypes.
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Samsung announced Thursday that Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Aug. 16 to discuss the finished product and to exchange ideas on how to put it to use.
"The core technologies developed by Samsung include heat-treatment and bioprocessing technologies, which kill the pathogens from human waste and make the effluent and solids released in the process safe for the environment," Samsung said in a statement.
"The system enables treated water to be fully recycled. Solid waste is dehydrated, dried and combusted into ashes, while liquid waste is treated using a biological purification process," it continued.
Seoul-based Samsung, known for TVs and computer chips, said it will offer royalty-free licenses to developing nations on patents related to the toilet project, while pursuing commercialization of the technology in the rest of the world.
The "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge" was kicked off in 2011 by the foundation to spur new technologies that could safely and effectively manage human waste.
The initiative is an effort to protect people and communities from human waste-borne pathogens, especially the 3.5 billion or so people who live in dense, urban areas with inadequate sanitation infrastructure.
Despite increased urbanization globally, people in many underdeveloped countries face abysmal sanitation and hygiene problems because access to proper toilets does not exist.
According to UNICEF, around 450 million people worldwide lacked functioning toilets as of 2019, with open defecation a major source of water pollution, especially in and around poor communities.
Each year, about 100,000 children 5 and younger who live in such communities are believed to die from diarrheal infection.
To combat such situations, India, for example, worked with the foundation to host the second "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge Fair" in Delhi in 2014.
The Indian government, which is fully supportive of sanitation research and development projects in service to poor communities, could be one of the first beneficiaries of Samsung's new concept toilet.
