Do you agree that Gates’ scheme to reinvent the toilet is ‘too high-tech’

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Hell everyone I read this article on Gates' scheme to reinvent the toilet is ‘too high-tech' . It says that

1. The Gates Foundation's challenge aims to deliver energy-producing toilets

2. An NGO worker and an engineer say low-cost, robust toilets are needed instead

3. But it is hard to predict world-changing innovation, says a Gates director

What do you think about this issue?

Source article is http://www.scidev.net/global/health/news/gates-scheme-to-reinvent-the-toilet-is-too-high-tech.html

2 Answers

  1. very well said Stephanie. Young people like you give a different perspective to these issue.

  2. I don't think that the Gates's "Reinvent the Toilet" scheme is about improving sanitation or hygiene at all. It's not interested in usability or communities's needs - it's purely invention for invention's sake with international development as a pretext for funnelling money into certain institutions's pockets. From what I've seen thus far, the projects don't have any accountability to communities and I'm not even sure if they're that innovative given the sheer number of existing toilet projects out there, many of which actually do try to figure out what needs are and seek to make the toilets usable. The idea of innovation as world-changing is in itself deeply flawed, and belongs to an era of technocracy that has done nothing but litter developing countries with unused inventions that no developed country would have permitted on their own soil. Innovations in and of themselves do not have much effect without an enabling sociopolitical environment, cultural politics, and a bevy of other factors, none of which this scheme is taking seriously. Even though these benefiting institutions are arguing that their innovations are for the good of the consumer, I have yet to see any investment into reaching out to or working with the consumer. The sanitation and hygiene crisis persists precisely because of schemes like this one, and the problem is not that it's "too high-tech". The problem is that it's simply not interested in serving anybody other than the privileged "researchers" who fail to do any research into toilet use.