A Seattle company has developed new technology that makes clean drinking water from human waste and Bill Gates is funding a pilot program planned in Senegal later this year, NPR reports.

It isn’t a new idea, just new technology. Treatment plants in Singapore and the U.S. have long been turning sewage into clean water for a while that’s supposedly safe for humans. Most of the recycled water doesn’t go into the water supply, however. It goes back into the Earth.

Gates made a video — check it out here — showing him drinking the water to prove he thinks it’s safe. In the video, he drinks from the Janicki Omniprocessor, a machine that he claims can turn human waste into clean drinking water in minutes.

“The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle,” he wrote on his blog, NPR reported. “And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe.”

The Gates Foundation funded the Omniprocessor (it also funds NPR). A prototype sits in Washington State, and another is expected to be set up for testing in Dakar, Senegal later this year. One machine should supply water for 100,000 people, in theory.

Here’s how the Omniprocessor works. Sewer sludge is fed into the machine and boiled. Water vapor separates from the solid waste. The vapor is cleaned using a cyclone. Harmful particles are filtered out. Condensation provides clean drinking water.

It is hoped that local entrepreneurs will collect the sludge, produce the water and energy run the processors.

“If things go well in Senegal, we’ll start looking for partners in the developing world,” Gates wrote in his blog, GatesNotes.