In a few years people around the world, including you, may be sitting on a different kind of toilet.
According to the UN,
4.5 billion people around the world do not have access to a safe toilet. 1.8 billion people use a drinking water source that could be contaminated with faeces. 892 million people poop out in the open. 62.5 percent of people around the world don't have access to safe sanitation.Lloyd Alter/ non-functioning toilets in Ecuador/CC BY 2.0
And in the developed world, we use huge amounts of expensive drinking water to wash away our waste, dumping it into oceans and rivers or leaky septic systems, or spending even more money to separate the poop from the water carrying it, just about the dumbest, most extravagantly wasteful system you could imagine, literally pissing away phosphorus and nutrients while we use natural gas and dig giant holes for phosphates to make fertilizer.
© Bill Gates in China talking poop and high-tech toilets/ Getty images
