There is a company, named Maximum Performance, that creates fake poop for testing new toilet designs. Pic at the link

Did you know that there is a company, named Maximum Performance, that creates fake poop for testing new toilet designs. Pic at the link.

 

Last week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it’s purchasing 50 pounds of fake poop.

 

A practical joke? No, not in the least.

 

Nor is this synthetic poop a plastic replica of the real thing; it’s an organic version made from soybeans. The Gates Foundation will use it to test high-tech commodes at their Reinvent the Toilet Fair next week.

 

Naturally, real poop would not be welcome inside the foundation’s elegant Seattle offices. But if you’re going to demonstrate how supertoilets could cut down the spread of diseases and reduce environmental footprints, you’d better have a reasonable substitute.

 

The Gates Foundation might be best known for its work on malaria and vaccines. But lately it has also taken an interest in sanitation, for good reason. More than 2.6 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean toilets, and 1.5 million children die each year of diseases that could be prevented with decent sanitation.

 

 

Soybean paste is mixed to the right consistency and moisture content to produce fake poop at the Maximum Performance factory.

 

Maximum Performance

But in many places that lack sanitation, people also don’t have good access to water or power. So last year, the Gates Foundation granted eight engineers around the world more than $3 million to develop cheap commodes that don’t require water, electricity, or even a connection to a sewage system. The idea was that the toilets would be completely self-contained, and instead of releasing waste out into the world, they would produce clean water and nutrients useful for farming.

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There is a company, named Maximum Performance, that creates fake poop for testing new toilet designs. Pic at the link