Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainYooh
The technology has been there for decades to clean every little bit of impurity from wastewater. You could actually turn your own diarrhea into distilled water  . Potable water on spacecraft is fully recycled. But the treatment costs are very high. Modern wastewater treatment plants in large urban centres treat wastewater to the Government-approved chemical impurity levels before discharging it to the public open water bodies, while storing the residual sludge in lagoons (which is another problem on its own, of course).
Under-developed and undeveloped countries have very primitive ability to treat potable water in large quantities. Plus, some countries have very limited access to sources of potable water; hence, the value of the plant funded by Gates' Foundation. |
Yup. The city of New York has a pretty amazing water treatment plant that gets every single gallon they possibly can out of sewage for clean water. It just costs a lot of money.
What Gates has done is help develop a much cheaper way to do this.