About 2.4 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate toilet facilities, and hundreds of children die every day from preventable, sanitation-related diarrheal diseases. But water scarcity—a worsening problem in many low-resource environments—is one factor that makes it difficult to meet the need for clean, functioning toilets. “Many parts of the world don’t have flushing toilets because they just don’t have the water required to operate them,” says Peter Lillehoj, an engineer at Michigan State University. Like a number of other researchers, he believes that minimizing the amount of water necessary for cleaning each toilet would increase access to sanitation.
