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Strategies & Market Trends : The Financial Collapse of 2001 Unwinding -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (10726)	3/31/2023 1:16:37 AM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13784

Bill Gates puts some capital to work in Africa... This Toilet Works Off the Grid: To improve urban and rural sanitation, South Africa is testing toilet technologies that work without running water, electricity or expensive sewer infrastructure. By Antony Sguazzin and Laura Millan Lombrana March 24, 2023 at 12:01 AM AKDT The filtration system for the four flush toilets in a shantytown in Johannesburg’s Soweto township is surrounded by a steel fence crowned with barbed wire. A year ago, a thief tried to steal this crucial equipment and the community chased him off, determined to protect it. These are the only four toilets for about 340 nearby residents, and they’ve made a huge difference in people’s lives, says Asavela Mdudi, a 21-year-old janitor wearing faded denim shorts, a white T-shirt and pink sneakers. “We no longer get infections, especially us girls,” Mdudi says as she sits with her toddler. No one particularly liked the plastic chemical toilets that preceded the flush toilets. They were emptied only twice a week and often overflowed. The new ones are not connected to the sewage network either, but they don’t need to be: They use water on a closed-loop circuit. After flushing, the waste goes to a collection tank. From there, it’s drawn through a series of membranes that separate solids from liquids and eliminate bacteria without the need for chemicals. A final step injects ozone into the water, a process that eliminates all remaining contaminants. That purified water can be reused indefinitely for flushing. Solar panels (with a battery backup) power the installation, an advantage in a country plagued by blackouts. The company behind the installation is Enviro Options, based in the outskirts of Johannesburg, in partnership with South Africa’s Water Research Commission, or WRC. (It’s also supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.) Enviro started producing toilet solutions three decades ago and has five installations of its closed-circuit model across South Africa. “We’re saving 180,000 liters of drinking water per month in each of the plots. It’s massive,” says Chief Technology Officer Mark La Trobe. Projects such as the one in Soweto are part of a larger push by the national government to improve access to proper sanitation. They’re also a test of technologies that remove the need for complex and expensive sewage infrastructure, a prohibitive obstacle in a frequently drought-stricken country that’s set to get only hotter. Full story... This Toilet Works Off the Grid bloomberg.com