In the early year of 2015, a video of Bill Gates drinking water went viral on the media. However, it wasn’t just a regular drinking water from the fountain nor was it filtered water from a bottle. It was water that came out of human waste. Feces to be exact. The Gates Foundation currently calls this investment the “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Water, Sanitation & Hygiene program” as they try to achieve their goal of bringing filtered, clean water to the people who do not have access to clean water such as Dakar, a city in West Africa. According to CNN, a third of the city’s population store their waste in tanks due to their lack of a proper use of the sewer system. The improper waste disposal can cause groundwater contamination which will eventually infect the people as well.

West Africa is not the only place in need of proper sanitation. Throughout the world, 2.5 billion people(about forty percent of the world’s population) live without a proper toilet and sanitation. According to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website, 700,000 children die each year due to poor sanitation and chronic diarrhea. In order to prevent the deaths caused by infections, the Gates Foundation decided to create a new machine which will aid those in need of a clean environment. Collaborating with a company called Janicki--an engineering and manufacturing company that specializes in making large-scale and precise equipment while working with advanced metals--the foundation was able to produce an Omniprocessor. The Omniprocessor is a device that burns human waste at a degree of 1,000 degrees Celsius so that the burning process would not create any unpleasant smell for the environment. Not only does the Omniprocessor get rid of unnecessary waste, but by burning the substance, it can create electricity and clean water from human waste which the people can use to better their daily lives. Even Bill Gate drank the water made from the Omniprocessor claiming that the water tasted as good as any water he had drunk out of a bottle.

By placing the Omniprocessor in places that cannot afford to pay the waste disposal truck, people can save money as the machine gets rid of the waste while providing clean water and electricity all at the same time. Although they have more improvements to make, hopefully in the near future, the Omniprocessor will bring clean resources and improve the health of the many people living in such environment

<Juwon Chun Granada Hills Charter High 10th Grade>