This Eco-Friendly Toilet Turns Your Poop Into Crypto Coins
Image via Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (CC BY 4.0)
With meme cryptocurrencies such as DogeCoin and Shiba Inu Coin taking over the world, fans of alternative digital assets can now turn their attention to one that pays you to poop.
A few years back, Cho Jae-weon, an environment engineering professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, created a prototype of an eco-friendly toilet that rewards users with ‘Ggool’ (meaning honey in Korean). Students who choose to use the toilet can earn 10 Ggool a day, which can be spent at the campus’ cafes.
The eco-friendly BeeVi toilet doesn’t waste gallons of water like most toilets do. Instead, it uses a vacuum pump to suck whatever’s left behind into an underground bioreactor, where microorganisms break down the waste. Interestingly, the methane produced by the microorganisms is then repurposed as heating fuel.
“If we think outside the box, feces [have] precious value to make energy and manure. I have put this value into ecological circulation,” professor Cho told Reuters.
According to the Reuters interview, professor Cho explained that an average person’s daily waste (approximately just over a pound) can be converted into 50 liters of methane gas, which can then be turned into 0.5kWh of electricity. That’s enough energy to run one load of dishes on energy saver mode, as per Gizmodo.
It seems Prof Cho’s project has caused his students to think of bio-waste differently. A student told Reuters she had “only ever thought that feces are dirty,” but now they are “a treasure of great value” to her.
Unfortunately, the eco-toilet and its cryptocurrency can only be redeemed from this one toilet at the South Korean university. Though with the way meme cryptocurrencies are taking off online, it won’t be surprising if this catches on eventually.
[via Gizmodo, cover image via Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (CC BY 4.0)]
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