A University of Toronto team won third place this week in an international competition to design a toilet suitable for developing countries.
The award-winning U of T design uses sand and UV-lighting to process liquid waste, and a smolder chamber to incinerate and disinfect solid waste.
The University of Toronto was one of eight universities that received a total of $400,000 US towards their conceptual design. The design team, led by Professor Yu-Ling Cheng, was awarded an additional $40,000 this week to continue its research efforts.
The competition, hosted in Seattle August 14–15 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, allowed universities to showcase their response to the Foundation’s year-old Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. The need for appropriate waste disposal in developing countries is a pressing health concern, with an estimated 2.5 billion people without access to flush toilets. The Foundation’s challenge asked for submissions that were safe, user-friendly and could ideally recycle human waste into usable resources.
