In developing countries, human waste is often left out in the open or funneled into the ocean, where it contaminates the water supply—leading to thousands of deaths each year due to gastrointestinal diseases. That’s beginning to change after an alliance of companies like Unilever and nonprofits like The World Bank have come together to launch The Toilet Accelerator, an initiative aimed at providing business support to emerging sanitation entrepreneurs in the developing world. The initiative began by helping companies manufacture toilets at scale, but now they are working with sanitation companies to turn human waste into a “resource” that can be effectively reused. At one sanitation company in Ghana, dried fecal waste is being mixed with organic waste to be converted into biogas that fuels electricity generators.
The developing world is turning its poop problem into a resource
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