Beijing (CNN) Bill Gates stunned the crowd in Beijing on Tuesday with a jar of human feces in his hand.

The Microsoft founder was hosting the Reinvented Toilet Expo. His pitch? To commercialize futuristic toilets that don't need water or sewers.

"Today, rich countries have a sewage system where you bring water in, put the human waste in it and it goes out to all the way to a treatment processing plant," Gates told CNN.

"That requires the installation of a lot of pipes. It's very expensive and it's not gonna happen in these newer, poorer cities."

According to the WHO, around 2.3 billion people still do not have basic sanitation facilities such as toilets or latrines.

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