The name sounds funny but the idea is no joke: it’s a personal toilet called the pee-pool, Anders Wilhelmson, a Swedish architect, is the inventor of the pee-pool.
He became interested in the idea of sanitation after taking part in a research project on the social and political development of cities. One of the most common problems he found in developing countries was the lack of toilets. He wanted to do something to help, so working with others, he started the project in 2005, and the next year started a company called Peepoolple.
The toilet is a single-use bag made of environmentally friendly plastics. The inside is treated with urea(尿素), a chemical commonly used as fertilizer. The hotter the weather, the more quickly the waste turns into what is needed by plants. The sanitation process can be as soon as a couple of hours or as long as two to four weeks, you can just bury it in a pot and grow whatever you like.
The company expects to start selling the bags in August in Kenya and Bangladesh, but it is just beginning production and sales in Nairobi now. Full production could reach about half a million bags a day and people may be able to buy the pee-pool in countries Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc.
The United Nations says more than two and a half billion people around the world do not have good sanitation. Many have no choice but to use the outdoors, which is not only bad for the environment, but also harmful to people’s health. Each year, poor sanitation leads to three fifths of those people getting an infectious disease which on average causes one out of 1,000 patients to die.
Jack Smith, the founder of the World Toilet Organization, says “This is quite an unacceptable situation given the fact that we are living in the modern world, and strangely, many of them own televisions, phones but have no toilet.”
1.What was the original purpose of Anders Wilhelmson in starting the company?
A. To protect the local environment.
B. To earn a lot of money from the project.
C. To do research on the social development.
D. To help solve the problem of lack of toilets in developing countries.
2.What can be learned about the pee-pool from the passage?
A. It can be used over again.
B. Its sanitation process doesn’t last long.
C. It works better in summer than in winter.
D. It should be buried in a pot after being used.
3.In which place can people buy the Pee-pool now?
A. Nairobi.B. Kenya.C. Sweden.D. Bangladesh.
4.The fifth paragraph is written mainly to tell us that ________.
A. poor sanitation may cause many problems
B. many people don’t care for the environment
C. many people get ill from using the outdoors
D. quite a number of people die from poor sanitation
5.The underlined word “This” in the last paragraph probably refers to ________.
A. the outdoors being damaged
B. many places being short of toilets
C. many people having TVs and phones
D. many people getting an infectious disease
