BMGF Grand Challenges Explorations Grants (Round 6) awarded to 5 SuSanA partners

On April 28, 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) announced that 88 new global health projects received Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The topic of this award was 'Create the Next Generation of Sanitation Technologies'. Four SuSanA partners were amongst the award winners.

The four SuSanA partners were awarded the grants for the following projects :

1. Developing Fortified Excreta Pellets for Use in Agriculture
Primary Investigator: International Water Management Institute, Accra, Ghana
Olufunke Cofie of the International Water Management Institute in Ghana will develop and test fortified fertilizer pellets from treated human excreta for market sale. If successful, the production at large scale would enhance agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa while also contributing to reduction in environmental health risk from untreated human waste.

2. Ecological Sanitation for the Base of the Pyramid
Primary Investigator: Water, Agroforestry, Nutrition and Development Foundation (WAND), Cagayan de Oro, Philippines
Elmer Sayre of the WAND Foundation in the Philippines will explore how to close the loop between sanitation, health and food consumption by testing low-cost dry toilets appropriate for most conditions and using the human waste in small-scale agriculture efforts. Results and best practices will then be shared for future scale-up of the project.

3. Universal Slum Sanitation with 100% Safe Reuse of Nutrients
Primary Investigator: Sustainable Sanitation Design, Oslo, Norway
Karsten Gjefle of Sustainable Sanitation Design in Norway will design and test a low cost system to rapidly turn human excreta into pathogen-free compost for use as fertilizer for farmers. Gjefle and his team hope to create a viable financial market that will remove untreated sewage from urban areas and also provide farmers with recycled, safe and natural soil improvements.

4. Using Waste To Move Waste
Primary Investigator: Nature Healing Nature, Houston, TX, United States
Mark Illian of Nature Healing Nature in the U.S. will work with villagers in rural Africa to design a pour-flush latrine utilizing readily available urine instead of scarce water for flushing, and drops of used cooking oil for odor control. Achieving a successful design of these latrines could stimulate more latrine building to reduce open defecation and resulting diarrheal diseases.

5. The Earth Auger Toilet: Innovation in Waterless Sanitation
Primary Investigator: Marcos Fioravanti, Fundación In Terris, Guayaquil, Ecuador
Marcos Fioravanti and Chris Canaday of Fundación In Terris in Ecuador will develop a pedal-operated, low-cost, easy-to-use, odorless urine-diverting dry toilet, in which feces and urine disappear after each use, dry material is mixed in mechanically instead of polluting water, and it all becomes plant fertilizer.

More information available on the Great Challenges website

Ultima actualización ( lunes 23 de mayo de 2011 16:35 )

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