Samsung Electronics has announced it has completed a project in response to the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge.

According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, approximately 3.6 billion people around the world are forced to use unsafe sanitation facilities with limited access to safe water and hygiene, resulting in half a million children under age 5 dying every year from diarrheal diseases. Launched in 2011 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge aims to develop transformative toilet technologies around the world that can safely and effectively manage human waste.

Over three years, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, the research and development arm of the Korea-based company, finished the development of core technologies, including heat-treatment and bioprocessing technologies to kill pathogens, and developed and tested a prototype. Through the reinvented toilet, solid waste is dehydrated, dried, and burned into ashes, while liquid waste is treated through a biological purification process, which enables the treated water to be fully recycled.

Samsung plans to offer royalty-free licenses of patents related to the project to developing countries during the commercialization stage, and the two organizations will work together to identify industry partners willing to commercialize the technology.

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Davor Lovincic)