Bill Gates plans to get gas from your butt.

[n2doc]

BY SARAH LASKOW
14 JUN 2011 10:44 AM

Bill Gates' latest clean energy investment gives a whole new meaning to the term "natural gas." The Gates Foundation is putting $1.5 million towards developing a "Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility" in Accra, Ghana. The facility takes human poop and turns it into biodiesel and methane, the same stuff natural gas companies are so eagerly pumping out of the ground lately.

Besides the "wow" (or "ick") factor here, there's the unabashedly good-for-the-world part: even aside from providing frack-free natural gas power, facilities like these could keep human waste from contaminating water sources and spreading disease.

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-14-bill-gates-plans-to-get-gas-from-your-butt.-no-really

[FormerDittoHead]

1. I suppose it's better than having to use the iToilet.

http://www.electric-chicken.co.uk/itoilet.html

"your initial $2500 iToilet purchase only includes the toilet bowl. Other items like the toilet seat, chain and pipes are sold separately at $700 each. Apple considers these items as 'non-essential'"

[KurtNYC]

2. this is not diversifying! He has been making money off sh*t for years.

[mochajava666]

3. I think a lot of sewage treatment plants already use human waste

produced methane that they collect from their sludge lagoons. I think the methane is produced through anaerobic digestion. In the seventies, they just burned it off, because they couldn't get a regular constant supply.

If they went through the bother to capture it, I think the amount wasn't much, but they could run some of their operations with it.


Bill, if you give me money, you can pull my finger anytime.