Our International Team Takes on Biodigesters in Paraguay

GREEN members Lauren Gros and Matt Maury, along with alumni Naman Trivedi and Ximena Dure, spent two weeks in May of 2016 working on a biodigester project with farmers in Paraguay. Biodigesters are elongated bags that convert livestock waste to methane for cooking and fertilizer for farming. The technology, though simple, can help ameliorate multiple environmental, health-related, economic, and social justice problems all at once. Methane from biodigesters can be used for cooking. We coupled our device installations with outdoor stove builds and tubing designed to channel the methane to the stove. By doing this, recipients of the biodigesters obtained access to clean-burning stoves. While these stoves do emit some carbon dioxide, this method will hopefully replace local farmers’ practice of open-fire cooking, which produces greenhouse gases roughly one-hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide, and additionally increase chances of lung cancer by about 20% (according to the WHO). By this mechanism alone, biodigesters produce immense environmental and health benefits.

In addition, the technology’s use of livestock waste as fuel means reduced polluted water, as the waste that otherwise would mix with water is contained. Furthermore, rather than having to cut trees for fuel, the farmers simply use what they previously had, yet had no use for. Through this mechanism biodigesters help mitigate the issue of deforestation. Thus the technology helps counteract three separate environmental issues: greenhouse gas emittance, water pollution, and deforestation.

The fact that biodigesters reduce farmers’ need for wood has a social justice component in tandem with the environmental one. Typically women are de facto in charge of wood collection, yet this necessitates waking up at extremely early hours and spending as many as six hours away from home scavenging for wood. This puts women in potentially dangerous situations, demands extreme physical exertion, and takes significant time from them that could be spent engaging in other activities, perhaps empowering them economically. By minimizing this need for wood, much time is freed up for women, and in consequence, their opportunities are increased.

One last benefit of biodigesters is their production of an organic fertilizer, a product of the livestock waste. Since our recipients are farmers, this is very useful, assisting them with their costs of business. In this way, the technology economically empowers the farmers.

Our inspiration for the project comes from Ximena (“Xime”). As a native Paraguayan, she was well aware of some of the particular local problems in and near where she lives. As a member of GREEN, she was inspired to pursue her desire to make her home a better place with GREEN’s focus on sustainability. Thus the GREEN Paraguay Biodigester was born.

It took over a year’s worth of planning and funding, yet seeing the project’s completion was well worth the effort. While in Paraguay, Lauren, Naman, Xime and I split our time between assisting with the actual installations, interviewing the local farmers who were to receive the devices, and taking videos of such interviews and installations. These videos will eventually be compiled into a single informational video about our project and biodigester technology as a whole. We intend to use it to spread awareness about the technology and the problems it helps address.