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Nov 23, 2012

Fail of the year? Bill Gates Toilet Reinvention Contest? Problem solved in 1881

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., talks about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's competition to create a next-generation toilet. The California Institute of Technology's Michael Hoffmann, who led a group that won first place in the contest, shows his project at the event in Seattle.  http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-08-15/bill-gates-awards-toilet-reinvention-contest-winners

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The gates foundation has done some wonderful and amazing work, but needs to focus on "now" technology to help people now.

There is no need for a project that awards high tech $1,000 dollar toilets... When there have been viable and affordable composting toilets for nearly 100 years? Compost is then used to burn as fuel, fertilizer or building material. 

Low tech options are typically the most affordable, viable and sustainable. - Haase

SELF-ACTING EARTH CLOSET (1881)

Earth Cloest from 1881Another example of early composting toilet history that throws the recent claims of some manufacturers that they invented composting toilets out the window.

A Composting Toilet World reader sent us in this wonderful photo of an advertisment for the “Self-Acting Earth Closet” from April, 1881 edition of “The Ironmongers’ Catalogue.”

SELF-ACTING EARTH CLOSET.
Portable, and requires no fixing indoors or outside.
A substitute for the Water Closet, securing healthy homes, inoffensive drains, and garden fertility.

“Thou shalt not pollute rivers or water-courses.”

Source: http://compostingtoilet.org/news/000305.php

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