Joking at the conference, Gates said, "I have to say, a decade ago I never imagined that I'd know so much about poop," "And I definitely never thought that Melinda would have to tell me to stop talking about toilets and faecal sludge at the dinner table."
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and the China Chamber of International Commerce (CCOIC), today joined global innovators, development banks, private-sector players, and governments at the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing.
Together, they committed to accelerating the commercialization and adoption of disruptive sanitation technologies worldwide over the next decade. The rapid expansion of new, off-grid sanitation products and systems could dramatically reduce the global human and economic toll of unsafe sanitation, including the deaths of half a million children under the age of 5 each year and the more than $200 billion that is lost due to health care costs and decreased income and productivity.
Pointing to the feces inside the clear canister resting on a table, Gates said that in places without sanitation people have got way more than that. "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 the quality of life, but with disease and death and with malnutrition," he told attendees as reported by Times Now.