Poop Your Way To a Greener Future: Toilet Generator Makes Electricity When You Flush
By Chris Weiss
You know that old, high-flow toilet that you’ve got sitting in your bathroom? Apparently, the thing isn’t only wasting water every time you drop a onesie or two-piece, it’s wasting electricity.
Tom Broadbent, a graduate of England’s De Montfort University in Leicester, points to this inefficiency with his new HighDro Power design. The device creates electricity from one of the most vile and useless phenomenons on Earth–toilet waste water. As the water comes pouring down through the pipes after a good newspaper read, it spins the turbine within the HighDro, working similar to any other water turbine. In other words, you’re poopin out wattage and green dollar bills, friend.
The device was designed with the large pipes and heavy flows of commercial–not home–plumbing in mind. Broadbent estimates that it could save a company $1,400 a year in a seven-story building.
Looks like a great idea, but I’d hate to be the sucker charged with unsticking a clogged turbine. [via Gadget Lab]
