A group of Swedes has come up with a clever and well-intentioned update to the flying toilet, which, according to the UN, describes how two-thirds of the people living in Kenya's Kibera slum go to the bathroom. Short version: crap in a plastic bag, chuck it out the door -- the toilet flies through the air.
Voila, the Peepoo (motto: "2.6 billion people just got their own toilet"), a "high performance degradable bioplastic" bag with a lining of urea to speed up the feces' breakdown into harmess biomass.
It would be great to see the Peepoo take off, though I think it will take a while to persuade people to use biodegradable bags rather than standard plastic bags, since they probably have more pressing stuff to worry about. Another one of the Peepoo's selling points is that it is clean to handle and more hygienic than a regular plastic bag, though I imagine that people who have been going to the bathroom in plastic bags for years have probably figured out how to do it without making a mess of things.
Great new invention dreamed up by forward-thinking foreigners or another doomed charity product dreamed up by forward-thinking foreigners?
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