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We live in a time where brilliant scientific advances are often overlooked in favor of those strictly pertaining to consumer technology. One can likely predict which month the new iPhone is coming out, but would be hard pressed to identify which nation is currently constructing the world’s largest supergiant particle collider. Unfortunately, in today’s consumer society, people tend to read far more into technological advances that will directly convenience their own lives, rather than those that will truly change the world around them.

But sometimes, an invention comes about that is so vitally important to the future of the planet, it might even be able to turn the country’s attention away from hot-topic issues like the Kardashians or finding more oil to exploit. An invention that Bill Gates, one of the world’s most learned philanthropists, widely endorses. An invention that literally uses your shit to power your shit. The device is known to mortal man simply as the Janicki Omniprocessor.

Try not to get too excited, but the way this prototype machine works sounds almost too good to be poo. Using an intricate steam combustion engine, the Omni Processor takes solid human waste and turns it into potable drinking water. More phenomenal, however, is the fact that the processor requires no energy to run once started. In fact, it is so highly efficient that it can run itself and produce excess power to be utilized in the developing communities it’s designed for. At its maximum burning capacity of 12.3 cubic meters of human waste per day, the current model of the Janicki machine can produce 10,800 liters of clean drinking water per day, or up to 150kW of excess energy. By February 2015, Janicki hopes to have the first Omniprocessor hard at work in Dakar.

The machine has massive potential for aiding developing nations for a plethora of reasons. At present, over 750 million individuals don’t have access to clean drinking water. However, conveniently for the Omni Processor, all of these people also happen to poop. In any region where a population exists, the Omniprocessor can be used to give glean water and energy from a simple human process.

As with many projects of this caliber, the expense of producing such a machine can make it far from cost effective to actually use. Fortunately, Janicki Bioenergy, the firm behind the machine, has Mr. Gates at its disposal. With the Gates Foundation now funding the Omniprocessor’s development, Gates has promised to keep the cost of the machine low to interest potential investors from developing nations. Ideally, by purchasing one of these machines, an entrepreneur can invest in a community in a way that benefits its inhabitants.

We’re far from a future without human suffering, but innovative devices such as the Omniprocessor consistently push us further into a fully developed world. Let’s hope American investors join Gates in funding the production. If the West is as civilized as it thinks, it should look out for other countries in need. Like the introduction of the Internet, birth control and antibiotics, seemingly simple Western innovations can potentially have massive effects on the developing world. One can only imagine what something as advanced as the Omniprocessor could do.

Contact Assistant Opinion Section Editor Sam Schanfarber at samuel.schanfarber@colorado.edu.