---
title: "Bill Gates Wants to Save Lives and Money With High-Tech Toilets"
description: "## Sanitation Salvation"
date: "2018-11-07"
modified: "2018-11-07"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/bill-gates-high-tech-toilets"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
tags:
  - "health"
  - "medicine"
  - "poop"
  - "sanitation"
  - "the digest"
---

# Bill Gates Wants to Save Lives and Money With High-Tech Toilets

![The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested big money in new sanitation technology, yielding developments that could save hundreds of thousands of lives.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/bill-gates-high-tech-toilets.png>)
*\<em\>Image: Tag Hartman-Simkins\</em\>*

## Sanitation Salvation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wants to change the way you poop. Speaking Tuesday at the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing, *[Bloomberg reported](<https://www.bloomberg.com/technology>)*, Bill Gates announced plans to upgrade the infrastructure we use to deal with human waste.

With better toilets, Gates argued, the amount of global infant deaths caused by sanitation-related illness could be [reduced by about 500,000](<https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099%2817%2930276-1/fulltext>) and save some $233 billion in medical expenses.

## Reuse, Recycle

Part of the plan is to invest in toilets and waste treatment facilities that [break down excrement](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/clean-coal-energy-poop>) and turn it into usable fertilizer and hydrogen that could then be [used in fuel cells](<https://futurism.com/ammonia-hydrogen-fuel>).

This technology and other clean poop solutions — developed by about twenty startups and other groups — were on display at the Beijing showcase. Over the course of the past decade, the Gates Foundation had invested in many of them — to the tune of about $200 million, according to *Bloomberg*.

## Everyone Gets One

Missing from Gates’ announcement is how he would help actually get this technology to the 2.3 billion people worldwide who, according to [UNICEF](<https://www.unicef.org/wash/3942_43084.html>), don’t have access to adequate sanitation.

But given the World Health Organization’s finding that each dollar invested in sanitation [yields more than five dollars](<http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/2012/globalcosts.pdf>) in returns, Gates and the entrepreneurs with whom he met should have plenty have plenty of motivation to get these toilets to the people who need them most.

**READ MORE:** [How Bill Gates aims to Save $233 Billion by reinventing the Toilet](<https://www.bloomberg.com/technology>) \[*Bloomberg*\]

***More on poop: [These Bacteria Digest Food Waste Into Biodegradable Plastic](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/bacteria-food-waste-biodegradable-plastic>)***

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)