by David Nuttle

Created on: December 25, 2008

Truly great inventions help provide solutions to significant problems, or help to meet critical needs. The best invention for 2008, in my opinion, was designed to provide a safe, efficient, and economical way to provide potable (clean) water to help dramatically reduce the United Nations' reported daily death rates of nearly 5,000 children, worldwide - children who die from drinking polluted/contaminated water. In most cases, these children were drinking water contaminated by human waste containing bacterium, viruses, and parasites. Subject children were living among the 2.9 billion people who seldom have potable water, sanitation, electricity, healthful foods, and/or income of more than US$2 per day. Moreover, most of these children were living in social, economic, and political isolation in the nations where they were residing. In most cases, their own governments did not care if they lived or died because those governments retained power by means of force and corruption. In brief, these children really died because their parents had, and have, no real political power.

The innovation I believe is the best invention for 2008, is an odorless, aerobic community composting toilet with an attached solar distillation unit to produce large quantities of potable water from polluted source water. There were two inventors, Hill Trammell and David A. Nuttle, of Oklahoma, with U.S. Patent Application No. 61/127,243 filed on 05/12/2008. Composting is actually performed in four rotating tanks with one being for waste collection under aerobic conditions, two being converted to anaerobic mode to produce methane gas for use in producing green electricity, and the last section being for high-temperature aerobic composting to kill bacterium, viruses, and parasites so waste can be used as part of a compost fertilizer mix. Upon final composting, the last unit is emptied, and then becomes the new waste collection unit. This invention also has an added unit to utilize CO2 produced, by composting, to grow an algal crop to feed a desirable algae-eating fish, Tilapia (to increase available, healthful foods).

Subject invention will soon be manufactured in "kit" form for sale to United Nations relief agencies and NGOs (non-governmental agencies) seeking to assist the impoverished populations identified above. In some cases, governments of developing nations are expected to purchase and distribute these "kits" as a way to reduce their national health costs, and to help their poor citizens

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