BIOTECH, India, Turning food waste into biogas – Ashden Award winner
This video can be downloaded here: www.ashdenawards.org BIOTECH won an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy in 2007. To find out more visit the link above and check out the Ashden Awards Blog ashdenawards.blogspot.com BIOTECH has succeeded in tackling the problem of the dumping of food waste in the streets of Kerala through the installation of biogas plants that use the food waste to produce gas for cooking and, in some cases, electricity for lighting; the residue serves as a fertiliser. To date BIOTECH has built and installed an impressive 12000 domestic plants (160 of which also use human waste from latrines to avoid contamination of ground water), 220 institutional plants and 17 municipal plants that use waste from markets to power generators. The disposal of food waste and the production of clean energy are not the only benefits of biotech’s scheme. The plants also replace the equivalent of about 3.7 tonnes of LPG and diesel which in turn results in the saving of about 3700 tonnes/year of CO2, with further savings from the reduction in methane production as a result of the uncontrolled decomposition of waste, and from the transport of LPG.
