Nobody can accuse Samsung of trying to reinvent the wheel. The toilet, on the other hand… Yes, Samsung has come up with a technologically advanced toilet, providing us with a chance to indulge in some terrible humour. That’s not the first thing on our minds. It is, however, number two.

Jokes aside, the South Korean company really has an all-new take on the traditional thunderbox. It’s supposed to be a more environmentally friendly toilet, thanks to a couple of innovations.

[insert toilet humour here]

The company’s R&D division, the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, came up with the concept as part of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation challenge. The challenge was to literally reinvent the toilet to “…deliver truly inclusive sanitation services that reach the poorest communities”. Without having to install plumbing, preferably, because that’s infrastructure and it’s expensive.

Samsung’s water closet, following three years of development, can render down both liquid and solid (and presumably semi-solid) waste to something a little more… manageable. By which we mean recyclable. Using heat-treatment and bioprocessing technologies, Samsung’s toilet treats the water it produces so it may be completely recycled.

The chocolate logs most toilets produce are also altered on their journey. Solid waste is “dehydrated, dried and combusted into ashes”, which means fewer turds floating down rivers when it rains too hard.

The prototype porcelain throne isn’t ready for the commercial space. But when it is, Samsung intends to offer the technology to developing countries under a royalty-free license. The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge is aimed at countries that need it. Developing the tech and then asking for loads of money to use it would just be mean. When the tech launches, it could cut back on the unsanitary conditions experienced by some 3.6 billion people daily.