The Bill Gates Foundation gave the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine $4.6 million to create a worm toilet and that’s just what they did.
A $350 worm toilet is now available for use around the world and it’s a life-changer for some of the world’s most at-risk people. It’s called a Tiger Toilet.
“These are people who are getting toilets for the first time,” Ajeet Oak, director of the Tiger Toilet company, who received $170,000 from the Bill Gates Foundation, explained. “[Before getting a Tiger Toilet] they would go out in the field.”
The Tiger Toilet requires no electricity or running water to function. The toilet is not hooked up to a modern sewage system.
Unlike other pit latrines (a hole dug in the ground so one can defecate into it), this toilet doesn’t have the ripe odor one would typically find. Tiger worms, which feed on the waste, take care of that.
“Their natural breeding, natural habitat is in cow dung heaps, or horse shit heaps, that kind of thing,” Oak told Business Insider. “Poop. That’s where they like to live.”
While in Beijing, Gates told reporters that he was ready to put up an additional $200 million for developing next-generation toilets that don’t require attachment to a sewer system.
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