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CU Team Wins Grant To Reinvent Toilet

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - A team of student and faculty engineers from the University of Colorado in Boulder is among the winners of grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reinvent the toilet.

The foundation has a competition to invent a waterless, hygienic, safe, affordable toilet for the 2.5 billion people worldwide who don't have access to modern sanitation.

The CU team was awarded $780,000 for its idea in a second round of grant awards announced Tuesday. The CU team's idea involves using concentrated sunlight delivered through a bundle of fiber-optic cables to heat and decompose toilet waste for reuse in improving farm soils.

(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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