South Korean University Pays Crypto Students For Their … Poop

[ad_1]

The BeeVi is fecal force for good.

Getty

New toilet in South Korea gives poo a goal.

The “BeeVi” toilets, designed by a professor at the National Institute of Science and Technology in Ulsan, supply part of a university building with human waste. Students are encouraged to use the restroom with a virtual currency offer which they can then redeem for freshly brewed coffee, fruit, and books.

“If we think outside the box, faeces are valuable for producing energy and manure,” Cho Jae-weon, the designer of the toilet, told Reuters.

From the lab to your inbox. Receive the latest science stories from CNET weekly.

Feces have long been considered a source of energy. In 2019, BMW announced its partnership with a dairy farm to help charge electric cars in California with cow poo. In 2012, the Denver Zoo was propelling a vehicle with animal droppings.

When someone uses the BeeVi toilet, the feces are vacuum pumped into an underground tank to save water. The waste is broken down by microorganisms and becomes methane, which then serves as a source of energy to power a gas stove, a hot water boiler, and a solid oxide fuel cell. The name of the human powered toilet combines the words “bee” and “vision”.

Students earn 10 units of a digital currency called “Ggool” – “honey” in Korean – every day they use the bathroom. As part of this monetary system, designed by Cho, students scan a QR code in a Ggool marketplace on campus to pay for their goods.

Cho said the average person defecates about 500 grams, or 2.11 cups, per day. This waste can be converted into enough methane, and then into enough electricity, to sustain a car’s three-quarter mile trip.

But what do the students think of offering their excrement to supply the building? Apparently some agree. A graduate student told Reuters he “only thought the feces were dirty, but now it’s a treasure of great value to me.”

[ad_2]