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Bill Gates Talks about the Future of Toilets

比尔·盖茨推出新世代“无水马桶”

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has presented a container of feces to visitors to a trade show in China.

微软创始人比尔·盖茨（Bill Gates）在中国的一个贸易展上向来宾介绍了一款马桶。

No, not the China International Import Expo in Shanghai. Gates is at the "Reinvented Toilet" Expo in Beijing to discuss developing a safe process to remove human wastes.

该展会并非上海举行的中国国际进口博览会。盖茨是在北京的“新时代厕所”博览会上谈到要研究一种安全清理人类粪便的方法。

"You might guess what's in this beaker — and you'd be right. Human feces," the Microsoft founder told the gathering.

这位微软创始人在展会上介绍称：“你们大概猜到了这个烧杯里装的是什么——没错，人类粪便。”

He said, "This small amount of feces could contain as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs."

他说，“这点不起眼的粪便里可能包含有200万亿个轮状病毒细胞、200亿个志贺氏菌和10万个寄生虫卵。”

Gates noted that these microbes cause diseases that kill almost 500,000 children under the age of 5 every year.

盖茨指出，这些微生物引发的疾病每年导致约50万名5岁以下的儿童死亡。

More than 20 companies and research organizations are showing new toilet technologies at the three-day expo. These include self-contained toilets, a small self-powered waste treatment system called the Omni Processor and other inventions.

20多家公司和研究机构在这场为期三天的博览会上展示了各项新型厕所技术。其中包括独立厕所，有带有小型自供电垃圾处理系统的全能处理器厕所和其他各种发明。

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation presented its own idea for a future toilet that does not require water. Instead, it uses chemical to turn human waste into fertilizer. There are several designs of the toilet but all work by separating liquid and solid waste.

比尔与梅林达·盖茨基金会提出了一个大胆的设想——未来使用无水马桶。相反，可以使用化学物质将人类排泄物转化成肥料。还有几款不同的马桶设计，但都是通过分离液体和固体废物来进行的。

"The current toilet simply sends the waste away in the water, whereas these toilets don't have the sewer. They take both the liquids and solids and do chemical work on it, including burning it in most cases," Gates told Reuters. He compared the development of waterless toilets to that of personal computing in the mid-1970s.

盖茨告诉路透社：“现在的马桶只是把排泄物冲入水中，然而这些马桶没有下水道。新型马桶可以同时提取液体和固体，对其进行化学处理，大多数方式是焚烧。”他将无水马桶的发展与上世纪70年代中期的个人电脑进行对比。

The researchers are planning to show the waterless toilets to manufacturers. Gates said he expects that a more than $6 billion market for the toilets will develop by 2030.

研究人员计划向制造商展示无水马桶。盖茨表示，预计到2030年，这种马桶的市场规模将超过60亿美元。

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent more than $200 million since 2011 to support research and development of safe sanitation technology.

自2011年以来，比尔及梅林达·盖茨基金会已投入逾2亿美元，用于支持安全卫生技术的研发。

Across the world, UNICEF estimates that 4.5 billion people suffer a lack of safely operated sanitation systems. The organization says over 480,000 children under 5 die every year from diarrhea. Most of the deaths are in South Asia and African countries south of the Sahara desert.

联合国儿童基金会估计，全球有45亿人缺乏安全运行的卫生系统。该组织称，每年有超过48万名5岁以下的儿童死于腹泻。大部分死亡发生在南亚和撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲国家。

The Gates Foundation says poor sanitation also cost the world over $200 billion a year in healthcare and lost earnings.

盖茨基金会表示，恶劣的卫生条件每年还造成全世界2000多亿美元的医疗费用和收入损失。

I'm Mario Ritter.

马里奥·里特为您播报。