By Rory
View original post on the Camps International Project Blog

Its true – human waste is where its at! Its the future you know – dont need any of this extracting gas and oil from the centre of the earth with all its associated detrimental environmental effects – just use what you flush away every day. This is the ultimate in recycling and minimising your impact – so sit back and learn about Bio Gas Collectors – even better sit back and learn whilst contributing to your bio gas collector, if you get my drift!

And now for the technical stuff, apologies if you are eating your dinner whilst reading this!! Basically any waste from animals, or any other bio waste, when it bio degrades gives off methane gas. And all a bio gas collector does is collect this gas and enable the user to burn this gas in a stove or even lighting. Apparently humans, chickens and pigs are best since we eat all sorts of rubbish and therefore give off good quality gas – I am sure you know someone, possibly within your own family who gives off good gas! Cows and other grass eaters are not so good since their bodies are designed (loads of stomachs you know) to break their food to such a degree that they actual fart methane – cows are one of the higher contributers to green house gases – so most of the useful gas has already escaped before the waste (cow pat) leaves the cows posterior – however it can still be used but not as a main stay of the collector.

And so why am I going on about this – well myself and my good mate Ian (the architect, featured on previous blog posts) got to talking about it (as you do across a bar, you often find the conversation turning to toilet humour) and we reckoned there was some scope for experimenting and seeing if perhaps this is a good way of reducing our carbon footprint and doing a little something to help the planet – it may be small be every little bit helps and as the saying goes, or at least my saying, “a lot of littles make a big!” – (first coined when teaching people what to pack (or not to pack) in their rucksack prior to a 3 week trek).

So I am going to do some posts on the bio gas collector we are building at our camp in Tinangol – we are hoping that we can get this prototype sorted and roll it out in other communities where it might work. And myself and Ian are not trying to convince people that Bio Gas Collectors are our idea – no way, they have been around for quite some time and are used to differing effect in Asia and I am sure beyond. However what we are trying to do (well Ian is doing most of this technical stuff) is make it “buildable” by a group of unskilled volunteers with little if any expertise whilst also trying to keep the cost down – but more on this and the design over the next few weeks.

So next time you are sat on your porcelain throne at home (which I hope is at least once a day – although I know someone who is on it at least 4 times – no names hey Stu, but at the other extreme I knew a girl once who only “dropped the kids off at school” once every 3 weeks – now surely that cant be healthy!) – anyway next time you’re sat on the throne, contemplate the potential energy of your “produce” and ask your family if they wouldnt mind helping dig a large hole in the backyard and building a bio gas collector. Watch this space for more amusing toilet tales as we watch the progress and get down and dirty on the build of our very own Bio Gas Collector.

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