The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced the winners of its Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, a competition designed to foster the development of "next generation" toilets that can deliver safe and sustainable sanitation solutions.

Made through the foundation's Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene initiative, the awards were given to universities that came closest to designing toilets that could capture and process human waste without piped water, sewer, or electrical connections and transform that waste into useful resources such as energy and water at an affordable price. The winners include the California Institute of Technology, which was awarded the $100,000 first prize for a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity; UK-based Loughborough University, which received the $60,000 second prize for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water; and the University of Toronto, which was awarded the $40,000 third prize for a toilet that sanitizes the waste and recovers resources and clean water. The foundation also gave a $40,000 special recognition prize to Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) and EOOS for their toilet user interface design.

In addition, the foundation announced a second round of Reinvent the Toilet Challenge grants totaling nearly $3.4 million to UK-based Cranfield University, Eram Scientific Solutions Private Limited in India, the Research Triangle Institute in Durham, North Carolina, and the University of Colorado Boulder.

"Many of these innovations will not only revolutionize sanitation in the developing world, but also help transform our dependence on traditional flush toilets in wealthy nations," said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. "All the participants are united by a common desire to create a better world — a world where no child dies needlessly from a lack of safe sanitation and where all people can live healthy, dignified lives."