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Poop in hand, Bill Gates backs China’s toilet revolution
BEIJING, Nov 6, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – As one of the world’s richest men and
most active philanthropists, Bill Gates usually has his hands full. Just not
with poop.
So it came as a surprise when the founder of Microsoft brandished a jar of
human waste at a forum on the future of the toilet in Beijing on Tuesday.
The stunt was an effort to draw attention to a problem affecting
developing countries around the world: not enough toilets.
“In places without sanitation you have got way more than that,” Gates
said, pointing to the feces inside the clear canister resting on a table.
“And that’s what kids when they are out playing, they are being exposed to
all the time, and that’s why we connect this not just with quality of life,
but with disease and death and with malnutrition,” he told attendees.
The billionaire has used part of his considerable fortune to provide
clean, comfortable sanitation facilities to the nearly half of the world’s
population that suffers without.
“When you think of things that are basic right up there with health and
enough to eat, you think that having a reasonable toilet certainly belongs on
that list,” Gates said.
Gates has previously used shock tactics to draw attention to his disease-
battling efforts. In 2009, he loosed mosquitoes at a Technology,
Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference in California to make a point about
the deadly sting of malaria — waiting a minute or so before assuring the
audience the liberated insects were disease-free.
Gates was in Beijing on Tuesday for the “Reinvented Toilet Expo”, a forum
hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation showcasing various cutting edge
toilet technology in lieu of sewers, making them easier and cheaper to
install the devices.
The world’s number two economy is in the midst of a drive to improve its
notoriously malodorous bathrooms, a campaign President Xi Jinping has dubbed
the “toilet revolution.” “China has made great progress in improving health
and sanitation for millions of people,” Gates said.
“China has an opportunity to launch a new category of innovated non-
sewered sanitation solutions that will benefit millions of people worldwide.”
BSS/AFP/MSY/1306 hrs