Linking to a blog post from July, the Microsoft co-founder wrote: "I've done some weird crap over the years: I drank water from fecal sludge with Jimmy Fallon, shared the stage with a jar of human feces, and smelled pit latrine odor."
"These antics got a few laughs, but my goal has always been to get people to care about an issue that impacts 3.6 billion people: poor sanitation," the philanthropist added. "Thanks to scientists and engineers from around the world, we're getting closer to new solutions that will prevent disease and illness."
He co-chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a nonprofit aiming to reduce poverty, disease, and inequity around the world, which he co-founded with his ex-wife.
Gates's LinkedIn post focused on a matter close to his heart: access to toilets and safe sanitation. "Living without a toilet is more than an inconvenience. It's dangerous. Unsafe sanitation means contaminated water, soil, and food. It causes illness and death," he wrote on his blog in July.
To raise awareness, Gates shared the stage with a beaker of poop during a speech at the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing in 2018.
