The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded a $4.8 million grant to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to study and improve sanitation systems in the developing world, the Seattle Times’ blog, “The Business of Giving” reports.

According to the blog, the grant money will support “a three-year project to research and develop new concepts for sanitation such as improving pit latrines, which are the only option for about 1.7 billion people without access to sewage systems,” through studies of “how advances in biotechnology, using enzymes and micro-organisms to convert plant waste to biofuel, for example, might be applied to sanitation.” The blog includes additional information on projects funded by the Gates Foundation’s program on water, sanitation and hygiene (Heim, 8/24).