Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Caltech Team Wins Top Prize, $100K In Bill Gates' Toilet Tech Effort

A team for the California Institute of Technology has scored the top prize, and $100,000, in a major technology effort--funded by Bill Gates--to reinvent the toilet. Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, announced an effort to help advance the technology of toilets, saying that current flush technology is "irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population". Gates' philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said it will invest $3.4M in advancing toilet projects, as part of an overall $6.5 "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge". The Caltech team won the top prize for its solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity. The prize was awarded at the foundation's "Reinvent the Toilet Fair" in Seattle yesterday.

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