Clean poop can be turned into 'humanure'

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge in 2011.

The Bill and Gates Foundation asked experts to recover resources intended to solve sanitation in poor countries.

The US produced 5,823,000 dry metric tons of biosolids, the end product of wastewater treatment plants.

The other half rots in landfills or is shoved into incinerators that spit smoke into the air.

The typical wastewater pipe lasts 50 to 100 years; the average US one is about 45 years old.

By 2042, 56 million more people will be using these centralized treatment systems, and some $271 billion will be needed to sustain them annually.

On-site filtration and treatment could be a crucial alternative to centralized treatment.

The first wastewater treatment plants in America were developed in the 1850s.

Today, more than 16,000 of them chug out sludge 24/7, processing what comes down municipal, home, and office pipes.

Igor and Aaron Tartakovskys started by whipping their family dogs’ droppings in a food processor with potassium permanganate.