This Sh!t Ain't Funny

Bill Gates Raises A Glass To (And Of) Water Made From Poop

In places where fresh water is hard to come by, how do you come up with clean drinking water?

Easy — get the water from poop.

It’s a scientifically sound idea, and Bill Gates has a video to prove it. In the video, released this week, he stands in front of the Janicki Omniprocessor, a giant new machine that can turn human waste into clean drinking water in minutes. He waits patiently as Peter Janicki — the engineer who invented the contraption — fills his glass with crystal-clear water from the machine.

Without the slightest hesitation, Gates takes a sip. “The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle,” he wrote on his blog. “And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe.”

The Omniprocessor is one of the latest projects funded by the Gates Foundation (which also supports NPR), and the philanthropist wants the rest of the world to back it up as well. The machine’s purpose is to help the 783 million people living without clean water and the nearly 2.5 billion who don’t have adequate sanitation.

"You go into a community and you open the tap. What comes from this is even worse than [the water] you get from the roof when it’s raining," says Doulaye Kone, senior program officer at the foundation.

Here’s how the Omniprocessor works. Sewer sludge feeds into the machine and is boiled inside a large tube. That separates water vapor from the solid waste, and then the two part ways. Water vapor travels up and through a cleaning system that uses a cyclone and several filters to remove harmful particles. A little condensation takes place and voila — out comes clean drinking water!

Continue reading and watch the video.

Up yo.