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The growing popularity of urban farming and gardening has been great not only for aspiring agricultural enthusiasts, but also for the catalogs that cater to them. While there has been an outcropping, so to speak, of useful, well-made and reasonably priced tools and equipment, there has been an additional proliferation of items that are, well, not exactly essential to one’s farming and gardening needs.

The criteria set out by the Gates Foundation are pretty strict. The toilets have to be hygenic and sustainable, discharge no pollutants, generate energy, recover nutrients and only need a tiny amount of water. Oh yeah, and they also need to have a cost of operation of a nickel per person per day.

From the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands comes a toilet that uses microwave technology to transform human waste into electricity.

KB Home's Fisher Plantation in Apopka will be the first community in the area to include solar power systems as standard. The systems are expected to help homeowners reduce monthly energy bills by as much as 50 percent compared to regular homes.