Elmira Bayrasli, Contributor I write about entrepreneurs,
innovations and innovative ideas The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology is a pristine place. Situated alongside Cambridge’s
charming Charles River, adorned with manicured lawns, sleek and
light buildings designed by I.M. Pei and awesome abstract
sculptures by Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and Picasso, the
prestigious center of higher learning and home to 76 Nobel
prizes prompts one to straighten his or her posture and fold out
any sartorial creases. Only plaid and proper dwell on these
highbrow grounds. Or so they did until a group of students from
MIT’s business, architecture and engineering schools recently
threw open the toilet. The toilet they threw open is Sanergy, a
year-old for-profit social enterprise that manufactures high-
quality, yet low-cost and compact toilets for urban slums in the
developing world and then uses human waste to produce energy and
fertilizer. It is an “affordable, accessible and hygienic
sanitation” solution for millions