South Korean toilet rewards user with digital currency

An engineering professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has shown that a person’s poop can generate income that can buy books, fruits or coffee!

Cho Jae-weon, an urban and environmental engineering professor at UNIST, devised a virtual currency called Ggool, which means ‘honey’ in Korean. Each person using his eco friendly toilet earns 10 Ggool a day.

Cho’s eco-friendly toilet is connected to a laboratory that uses excrement to produce biogas and manure. The BeeVi toilet uses a vacuum pump to send faeces into an underground tank, reducing water use. There, microorganisms break down the waste into methane, which becomes a source of energy for the building, powering a gas stove, hot-water boiler and solid oxide fuel cell.

An average person defecates about 500 grams a day, which can be converted to 50 litres of methane gas, Cho says. This gas can generate 0.5kWh of electricity. When a person uses the toilet, the human waste helps power a building and the user earns money. UNIST students can pick up the products they want at a shop and scan a QR code to pay with Ggool.

“I had only ever thought that faeces are dirty, but now it is a treasure of great value to me,” said student Heo Hui-jin at the Ggool market.

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