A couple years ago, Bill Gates introduced the world to a machine that converts sewage into drinkable water.
His stool studies continue today — this time with 120-year-old Swiss fragrance company Firmenich.
The problem they’re teaming up to solve? The global sanitation crisis.
Their solution? Poop perfume.
Well, at least part of their solution. As Gates writes on his blog, Firmenich concocted the fecal fragrance while “exploring how to effectively mask the offensive odors.”
According to the billionaire do-gooder, many of the world’s sanitation problems can be traced to unbearable bathroom odors. Moreover, people in developing countries with pit latrines prefer to defecate in the open — where they can actually breathe — which leads to tainted food and water supplies, which in turn leads to the death of about 800,000 children under the age of five every year.
Getting more people to use these rudimentary restrooms will take more than a spritz of Acqua Di Giò by Giorgio Armani (just one of the many classic scents Firmenich is behind). The goal, writes Gates, is to “develop fragrances that block certain receptors in our noses, making us unable to register certain malodors.”
They’ve developed a few effective fragrances, and you can see Gates test them in the video below against the poop perfume, which he describes as “a potent combination of sewage stink, barnyard sweat, and bitter ammonia topped off with vomit (or was it parmesan cheese?).”
This is one test we’re happy to leave to his more-than-capable nostrils.
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