Warning: Those who have a weak stomach should not read this story.
According to Unicef, around 620 million people (half the population) in India alone poops in public; that’s around 143,300,482 lbs. of feces every day. The rampant rise of excrement leads to higher risks in bacterial and virus contaminations of water, which is, to say the least, very unhealthy for the public and can cause diarrhea in children.
So, as a way to clean up the streets, Unicef came up with this great idea for their public health campaign in India by making a giant dancing anthropomorphic turd named Mr.Poo who will attempt to French kiss you. The whole campaign is dubbed “Take Poo to the Loo”, which seeks to spread awareness and garner support through pledges that will be sent to Pranab Mukherjee, the President of India; people can also donate, which allows for, according to the site, “long-term sustainable solutions for children of India to ensure that every child gets the best start in life.”
According to The Independent, since the start of the campaign via YouTube videos, people have had mixed reactions. Some commenters think of the campaign as “degrading”, while others criticized the videos for targeting audiences that are most likely already using toilets.
There’s a ton of disgusting animations involving Mr. Poo and his pals loitering and leaving stains everywhere. Watch at your own risk:
Mr. Poo will also bother you in public:
And if you really want to get into it, there’s a behind the scenes making of the poo song… which is a bunch of guys in a room emulating fart, toilet, and dripping sounds with drums and synthesizers, it’s actually pretty well done:
There’s a Mr. Poo Facebook game if you’re into that kind of stuff.
Despite assuming “The Thinker” position at least a couple times a day, the average person probably rarely ponders that our toilets signal how far we’ve come as a species. Our nearest relations in the animal world fling their feces at each other. Meanwhile, we are meticulously planning for the toilets of tomorrow.
There are a few notable designs that have stood out from the rest.
The “wellbeing toilet” is a prototype that was designed as part of a contest put on by Dyno-Rod Drains. The idea was to create a toilet that would both improve the health of humans and be good for the environment. Sam Sheard, Pierre Papet, and Victor Johansson of University of Arts London won with their simplistic design. The model would be an improvement over the more traditional “sitting” toilets found in the Western hemisphere. It turns out they are designed completely wrong for the purpose they were made for. Additionally, the wellbeing toilet would be designed to analyze your body’s waste to decipher your current health.
Toilet of the future? You might want to sit down for this wellbeing toilet. (ﾉﾟοﾟ)ﾉ No thanks！
http://t.co/CtvujlnNe1
It sounds like a winner, but before dubbing this potential toilet heir apparent to the ivory throne, there are some other prototypes that could be very popular one day.
The Kohler Numi will likely be the potty of choice among the elite. It can warm your feet and can lift or lower the seat automatically based on motion-detection technology. If you happen to have $6,400 lying around, you can take elegantly stylish craps in your uber modern mansion.
TOTO means business when it comes to toilets, having already released a model that is Wifi enabled and capable of reading urine samples. At this rate, future models will come with virtual reality video games that allow you to pretend you are a race car driver or WWII pilot. And no one will ever leave the bathroom or accomplish anything.
Whatever the choice toilet of the future looks like, one can only hope it’s ergonomic, technologically savvy….and self-cleaning.
The Consumer Electronics Show is always full of wonderful inventions, and this year has been no different (well, I guess that depends on who you ask). This year, event-goers got to catch a glimpse of CTA Digital’s iPotty, a training toilet for children, that includes an iPad dock.
“It’s obviously about potty training your kid, and doing it in an entertaining way,” says the presenter in the video, noting that the App Store already has potty training apps.
One of the major buzzwords in tech for the past few years has been smart. Since the advent of the smartphone, everything else must become start as well – smart TVs, smart cars, smart toilet paper, etc. That being said, it seems somewhat ridiculous that nobody has created the smart toilet yet. Thankfully, some geniuses in Japan have corrected this egregious oversight.
Lixill, a household item manufacturer, will be releasing three new models next year called the Satis. It’s the first mass produced toilet with a built in bluetooth controller. That means Android phones can control all the functions of the toilet through an app called “My Satis.”
The app not only controls flushing, but users can lift the seat, warm it, and activate that funky water jet that sprays up your butt all from the comfort of an Android device. As an added bonus, the app a “toilet diary” to monitor the user’s health based upon how many times they use the bathroom.
The Satis is only the latest in Japanese toilet innovation. It’s actually kind of embarrassing that the U.S. has fallen so far behind in such an important market. Everybody likes to stay healthy and toilets are one of the largest harbingers of disease. A smart toilet could effectively cut down on disease transmission by reducing contact with them.
Bill Gates may be reinventing the toilet for those who don’t have access to one, but it’s high time the U.S. steps up its bathroom technology game. The Japanese don’t settle for less when it comes to toilet technology, and neither should we.
Last week, Facebook announced that it surpassed a billion monthly active visitors. To celebrate this landmark in social media history, the company also launched its first-ever television ad. In the ad, Facebook compared itself to chairs. This, naturally, led to a lot of jokes and otherwise witty banter about Facebook (much of which included Clint Eastwood references).
Now, the parodies have begun, with this one coming from Andrew Zenn Films (disclaimer: video includes toilet humor):
What will the toilet of the future look like? How will it work? These are questions the Bill & Linda Gates foundation sought the answers to with its “Reinventing the Toilet” initiative. Now, the Foundation has selected a winner for its “Toilet Fair,” a competition designed to encourage breakthroughs in the toilet and sanitation space.
First, a little background.
“Poop. Doo Doo. Number 2. Kaka. Crap. $#%@. There’s a ton of it, and dozens of words to describe it, but for 2.6 billion people around the globe, there’s no place to actually do it,” a promo video from the Gates Foundation says. “Imagine that. No reliable, sanitary toilet. What would you do? Well, what you have to do – use anything you can find, which means in no time, you have a big pile of problems, like diseases – deadly diseases that are filling half the hospital beds in developing countries.”
“The flush toilet, as you and I know it, requires a massive amount of sewer infrastructure and immense amounts of water – two things increasingly hard to come by,” the video says. “Now is the time to eliminate that health hazard, recycle waste, and turn crap into valuable resources, like clean burning fuel, fertilizer, and believe it or not, fresh water. Today, our toilets can’t do that, but the toilet of tomorrow can…Let’s get our $#%@ together, and do it.”
This week in Seattle, the foundation is holding a Reinvent the Toilet Fair. Today I awarded prizes to three universities who responded to our challenge a year ago to come up with solutions for capturing and processing human waste and transforming it into useful resources. The winners included: first place to California Institute of Technology in the United States for designing a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity, second place to Loughborough University in the United Kingdom for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water, and third place to University of Toronto in Canada for a toilet that sanitizes feces and urine and recovers resources and clean water. A special recognition was awarded to Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) and EOOS for their outstanding design of a toilet user-interface.
Here’s the winner from the California Institute of Technology:
It’s described as, “A self-contained, solar-powered toilet and wastewater treatment system. A solar panel will produce enough power for an electrochemical reactor that is designed to break down water and human waste into hydrogen gas. The gas can then be stored for use in hydrogen fuel cells to provide a backup energy source for nighttime operation or use under low-sunlight conditions.”
Here’s what the Delft University of Technology came up with:
This one is described as, “A toilet system that applies microwave technology to transform human waste into electricity. The waste will be gasified using a microwave-induced plasma. This process will yield synthesis gas (syngas), a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The syngas will then be fed to a solid oxide fuel-cell to generate electricity.”
Here’s one from Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and EOOS
Switzerland:
This one is described as, “A functional model of a urine-diverting toilet that recovers water for flushing. The urine and feces will be safely transported to a decentralized processing center. The water used for cleaning will be recycled by a gravity-driven biological membrane.”
And here’s what Loughborough University came up with:
It’s a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water.
Bill Gates has been tweeting about the initiative and its winners throughout the week:
The Telegraph is sharing a short video from the event:
“Inventing new toilets is one of the most important things we can do to reduce child deaths and disease and improve people’s lives,” Gates said on his site. “It is also something that can help wealthier countries conserve fresh water for other important purposes besides flushing.”
“We don’t have all the answers yet, but I’m optimistic that we can and will solve this problem,” he added. “I’m hopeful that this unusual summer fair will be a positive step toward that important goal.”
It certainly looks like some pretty creative minds are on the case.
