I read an
interesting article from Bill Gates’s blog. This article is about a high
technology factory called Janicki ominprocessor. This factory can turn human
waste into drinking water, and at the same time, it generates electricity. This
article is coming with a video which posted on January 5. In the video Bill
gates drink a glass of pure water which was human excrement 5 minutes before.
Although we can’t say that turning excrement into clean drinking water is a
great innovation [why not? --JM], the unique part of Janicki Omniprocessor is to achieve generate
electricity, wastewater treatment, and solid waste treatment together.
I
played a computer game called SimCity in which the hardest challenges are
wastewater treatment and electricity problems. They are hard because they are not only about
wastewater treatment and electricity, but also environment problems. I have to
build water treatment plants and power stations in the corner because
they pollute land, and people who live near to them are easy to get sick.
Although Simcity is a computer game, it comes from real life. Water and
pollution problems have already become major problems for many countries. For
example, urbanization in China is getting worse and worse; water for living and
urban sewage have become big issues. According to the Ministry of Water Resources
statistics, 400 of 669 cities have inadequate water supplies, and 110 cities have
serious water shortages; 30 cities with 32 million people are plagued by water
shortages. Among 46 major cities, 45.6% of cities have poor water quality. This is
not only in China, but also in many countries around the world. So the Janicki Omniprocessor may be the answer for these problems. I really like this
factory, maybe today people don't necessary need it, but I believe this kind of
technology will become more and more important in the future. I think resource
recycling will become more important in the future, because nature has been loaded to
the limit. There are so many people living in the world and the population keeps growing. We can’t just take from nature, we need to coexist. Humans need
to develop sustainably: I think human will reach zero wastage rate in the
future.
--Lingyu Zhang
