With the 2016 Olympics looming in the distance, Rio de Janeiro city officials are aiming to tackle a major issue before the games begin – and that issue would be sanitation.

According to the Associated Press, Rio de Janeiro officials unveiled a new sanitation project, which hopes to eliminate the raw sewage that is tainting the waters of Rio’s Gloria Marian.

This from the Associated Press:

More than half of the sewage in this city of 12 million goes untreated, meaning that collected rainwater is often contaminated with raw sewage. More than 10,000 liters of raw sewage flows each second into most of Rio’s waterways, from the massive Guanabara Bay, where the Gloria Marina is located, to its beaches and lagoons.

Read the full article here.

In order to address this problem, the government is to build a pipeline to stem the flow of raw sewage into the marina. The project will connect area rainwater collectors with sewage treatment centers in order to eliminate the issue of raw sewage in the marina.

The project is expected to run around $6.2 million.

Though the issue of adequate sanitation goes far beyond Rio de Janeiro’s Gloria Marian. Forty percent of the world’s population – 2.5 billion people – practice open defecation or lack adequate sanitation facilities, and the consequences can be devastation for human health as well as the environment. To help combat this global issue, ECS is partnering with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in an exciting and innovative way to fund water and sanitation research.

Do you want to help solve some of the most challenging issues in the world today? Would you like to receive research funding to support your most innovative and creative problem solving ideas? Then please join us to lend your voice and expertise in helping to solve some of the world’s most challenging water and sanitation problems!

Damon opts to use toilet water in lieu of fresh H2O for his ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

Like many other celebrities, Matt Damon has decided to do his part and participate in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Though, the award-winning actor and humanitarian was a bit conflicted about wasting a bucket of clean water.

His solution? Use toilet water, of course.

“It posed kind of a problem for me, not only because there’s a drought here in California,” Damon explained in his video, “but because I co-founded Water.org, and we envision the day when everybody has access to clean drinking water – and there are about 800 million people in the world who don’t – and so dumping a clean bucket of water on my head seemed a little crazy.”

According to Water.org, there are about 2.4 billion people globally who still lack access to clean sanitation systems. Through his ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Damon saw a way to not only contribute to a good cause – but also educate about the very important global issue of sanitation.

“For those of you like my wife who think this is really disgusting, keep in mind that the water in our toilets in the West is actually cleaner than the water that most people in the developing world have access too.”

ECS is also focusing on the global issue of sanitation by partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the 4th International Electrochemical Energy Summit. By distributing over $200,000 in funding, ECS hopes to empower researchers and bolster innovate research. Join us in Cancun, October 5-9, to take part in this multi-day workshop.

The goal: to enable universal access to sustainable sanitation services by supporting the development of radically new sanitation technologies as well as markets for new sanitation products and services.

ECS is partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to host a multi-day workshop at the 2014 International Electrochemical Energy Summit (E2S) which takes place during the ECS and SMEQ Joint International meeting in Cancun, Mexico being held Oct. 5-9, 2014. The workshop will culminate in the distribution of over $200,000 in seed funding from ECS, addressing critical technology gaps in water, sanitation, and hygiene challenges being faced around the world.

40% of the world’s population–2.5 billion people–practice open defecation or lack adequate sanitation facilities, and the consequences can be devastating for human health as well as the environment.

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