full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Francis de los Reyes: Sanitation is a basic human right

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So we've got to rethink sanitation, and we've got to reinvent the sanitation infrastructure, and I'm going to argue that to do this, you have to employ systems thinking. We have to look at the whole sanitation chain. We satrt with a human interface, and then we have to think about how feces are collected and serotd, transported, treated and reused — and not just disposal but reuse.

So let's start with the haumn user interface. I say, it doesn't matter if you're a washer or a wiper, a stietr or a seatqtur, the human user irecaftne should be clean and easy to use, because after all, taking a dump should be pleasurable. (Laughter) And when we open the possibilities to udinnntdasreg this sanitation chain, then the back-end technology, the collection to the reuse, should not really matter, and then we can apply locally adoptable and context-sensitive solutions. So we can open ourselves to possibilities like, for example, this urine-diverting toilet, and there's two holes in this toilet. There's the front and the back, and the front collects the urine, and the back collects the fecal material. And so what you're doing is you're separating the urine, which has 80 prcenet of the nitrogen and 50 percent of the phosphorus, and then that can then be treated and precipitated to form things like sttrivue, which is a high-value fertilizer, and then the fecal material can then be defsntiiecd and again converted to high-value end products. Or, for example, in some of our research, you can ruese the water by treating it in on-site sanitation systems like planter boxes or ctnsetrcoud wntdaels. So we can open up all these possibilities if we take away the old paradigm of flush tioltes and treatment plants.

Open Cloze


So we've got to rethink sanitation, and we've got to reinvent the sanitation infrastructure, and I'm going to argue that to do this, you have to employ systems thinking. We have to look at the whole sanitation chain. We _____ with a human interface, and then we have to think about how feces are collected and ______, transported, treated and reused — and not just disposal but reuse.

So let's start with the _____ user interface. I say, it doesn't matter if you're a washer or a wiper, a ______ or a ________, the human user _________ should be clean and easy to use, because after all, taking a dump should be pleasurable. (Laughter) And when we open the possibilities to _____________ this sanitation chain, then the back-end technology, the collection to the reuse, should not really matter, and then we can apply locally adoptable and context-sensitive solutions. So we can open ourselves to possibilities like, for example, this urine-diverting toilet, and there's two holes in this toilet. There's the front and the back, and the front collects the urine, and the back collects the fecal material. And so what you're doing is you're separating the urine, which has 80 _______ of the nitrogen and 50 percent of the phosphorus, and then that can then be treated and precipitated to form things like ________, which is a high-value fertilizer, and then the fecal material can then be ___________ and again converted to high-value end products. Or, for example, in some of our research, you can _____ the water by treating it in on-site sanitation systems like planter boxes or ___________ ________. So we can open up all these possibilities if we take away the old paradigm of flush _______ and treatment plants.

Solution


  1. disinfected
  2. squatter
  3. interface
  4. human
  5. percent
  6. reuse
  7. toilets
  8. constructed
  9. stored
  10. wetlands
  11. understanding
  12. struvite
  13. sitter
  14. start

Original Text


So we've got to rethink sanitation, and we've got to reinvent the sanitation infrastructure, and I'm going to argue that to do this, you have to employ systems thinking. We have to look at the whole sanitation chain. We start with a human interface, and then we have to think about how feces are collected and stored, transported, treated and reused — and not just disposal but reuse.

So let's start with the human user interface. I say, it doesn't matter if you're a washer or a wiper, a sitter or a squatter, the human user interface should be clean and easy to use, because after all, taking a dump should be pleasurable. (Laughter) And when we open the possibilities to understanding this sanitation chain, then the back-end technology, the collection to the reuse, should not really matter, and then we can apply locally adoptable and context-sensitive solutions. So we can open ourselves to possibilities like, for example, this urine-diverting toilet, and there's two holes in this toilet. There's the front and the back, and the front collects the urine, and the back collects the fecal material. And so what you're doing is you're separating the urine, which has 80 percent of the nitrogen and 50 percent of the phosphorus, and then that can then be treated and precipitated to form things like struvite, which is a high-value fertilizer, and then the fecal material can then be disinfected and again converted to high-value end products. Or, for example, in some of our research, you can reuse the water by treating it in on-site sanitation systems like planter boxes or constructed wetlands. So we can open up all these possibilities if we take away the old paradigm of flush toilets and treatment plants.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
fecal material 3
flush toilets 3
wastewater treatment 2
treatment plants 2
technical term 2
billion people 2
adequate sanitation 2
human user 2
user interface 2
fund sanitation 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
human user interface 2

Important Words


  1. adoptable
  2. apply
  3. argue
  4. boxes
  5. chain
  6. clean
  7. collected
  8. collection
  9. collects
  10. constructed
  11. converted
  12. disinfected
  13. disposal
  14. dump
  15. easy
  16. employ
  17. fecal
  18. feces
  19. fertilizer
  20. flush
  21. form
  22. front
  23. holes
  24. human
  25. infrastructure
  26. interface
  27. laughter
  28. locally
  29. material
  30. matter
  31. nitrogen
  32. open
  33. paradigm
  34. percent
  35. phosphorus
  36. planter
  37. plants
  38. pleasurable
  39. possibilities
  40. precipitated
  41. products
  42. reinvent
  43. research
  44. rethink
  45. reuse
  46. reused
  47. sanitation
  48. separating
  49. sitter
  50. solutions
  51. squatter
  52. start
  53. stored
  54. struvite
  55. systems
  56. technology
  57. thinking
  58. toilet
  59. toilets
  60. transported
  61. treated
  62. treating
  63. treatment
  64. understanding
  65. urine
  66. user
  67. washer
  68. water
  69. wetlands
  70. wiper