Financial Times: Bill Gates: from software to toilets
Simon Kuper, columnist for the Financial Times

“…Only 27 percent of the world’s population has a home toilet that sends waste to sewers, then on to a treatment plant, estimates the World Health Organization. Three people in 10 have neither toilets nor latrines. They pay a daily price in disease and lost dignity. … But now, thanks largely to [Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation], companies are about to start selling what he terms the ‘reinvented toilet.’ … The first versions on sale will be multi-unit public toilets. They could replace the filthy communal latrines common in Indian slums. If schools install these toilets, more girls might attend. … But Gates sees public reinvented toilets as an imperfect solution, especially for women and children … [Gates] hopes that in the next few years, companies will be selling ‘the ultimate, which is the household reinvented toilet…'” (11/8).