POOP A SMELLY SOLUTION Leroy Mwasaru lives in Kenya Africa his school needed a new building When he was in high school in 2012 Workers started building it But then there was a problem The dorm was being built on a location that had pit-style toilets Tractors started digging Sewage or organic waste leaked into a nearby stream It was the only source of drinking water for Leroy’s community Now the stream was contaminated Many places in Kenya use bioreactors as a way to reuse human and animal waste
There were other problems at Leroy’s school too The cafeteria staff used firewood to heat food The smoke burned everyone’s eyes It was hard to breathe Plus the need for wood was shrinking the village’s forests Over the next four years Leroy and four friends worked on a solution They hoped it would fix both problems at once Their idea was to use human waste for fuel In 2016 the students designed a model of a human waste bioreactor A bioreactor is a machine in which a biological process DEFORESTATION IN EAST AFRICA East Africa has many different types of forests Fifteen percent of the wildlife population along the coast is found nowhere else in the world But these woods are in danger According to the World Wildlife Fund East Africa lost around 15 million acres 6 million ha of forest between 2000 and 2012 Much of this loss was because East Africans collected too much timber for fuel The region could lose 30 million acres 12 million ha between 2010 and 2030 if current practices continue
Bioreactors can turn human waste into fuel for cooking happens It had an underground chamber that held raw sewage and kitchen scraps Microorganisms in the sludge broke down the waste and turned it into power With one invention Leroy improved the lives of people in his community Because of his efforts the school saved 3 92 million Kenyan schillings in natural
