Waste turned into biogas for household

Type of practice Recover

Name of practice Waste turned into biogas for household

Name of main actor BIOTECH, agency of the Indian Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources in Kerala, South India

Type of actor(s) NGO

Location India

Stage of implementation End-of-life

Year of implementation 2005

What was/is being done? BIOTECH is an agency of the Indian Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources in Kerala, South India. It develops and installs plants that generate biogas from domestic biodegradable waste such as cooked food waste, vege table waste and waste water from kitchens (5 kg of kitchen waste produce one cubic meter of biogas, which is enough to meet about 50 percent of daily cooking needs for a family of 3 to 5 people). BIOTECH has also established decentralized plants for the anaerobic digestion of organic market waste or municipal solid or slaughterhouse waste. The electricity generated from the decentralized plants is used for street lightning and distributed to households. Furthermore, in 2003, the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI) developed a compact biogas plant for the treatment of organic waste at the household level. It requires 1–2 kg of food waste per day and is compact enough to be used by both rural and urban households. Approximately 2 000 such plants are currently in use in households in Maharashtra, India, and a few ARTI biogas plants have also been installed in Tanzania.

Outcomes and impacts Anaerobic digestion represents a great source of clean energy, able to replace carbon intensive traditional energy sources.