Turning Sewage into a Valuable Resource

There was a snippet in one of the newspapers about the toilets at a moffusil bus stand in Tamilnadu being used to power some of the cafeterias there, the unfortunate result being that people who would notmally eat at the cafeterias stopped doing this when they learned that the fuel came from their own shit. And while this silly experimentation continues, the capital of Tamilnadu, Chennai, discharges huge amounts of sewage every single day into the sea through the Cooum and the Adyar Rivers. Not only is the state government of Tamilnadu (and I am sure that the state governments of every other state in the country are no better) wasting a very valuable resource, it is also ruining the environment on its coast especially around two of the finest beaches in that part of the world.

I do think that it would be great for an Indiancompany to tie up with a Western one or for a Western company to go it alone and use this huge amount of power to generate electricity, fill the gas in cylinders and sell it or simply use the gas to run a fleet of cabs, delivery trucks or whatever in India. That is a country that ahs been hit extremely ahrd by fuel costs and this would be a fantastic way of using something that is already a filthy nuisance lying around damaging the environment in several ways to do something useful.

Some More Interesting Links

It is always refreshing to see more and more information about efforts in the field of renewable energy come out - with more people working in this area, something decent cannot but be in the offing. Ecogeek talks about an Indian Green community in Kolkata: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1948/83/ There is also an excellent analysis in easy to understand terms of the problems with the pricing of electric cars (and no, I don't mean quadricycles like the Reva G-Wiz) at: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1939/

There is also the matter of using sewage to power homes. There have been experimental gas collection centers at some bus termini in Tamilnadu from what I have read in the Indian media but there has been no systematic attempt at using human poop to do anything useful. In a country of 1.2 billion people squeezed into an area a third the size of the USA, this could be a fantastic idea. If the governments of the various states and the centre offered the use of toilets free to the poor, then this would also make the country vastly cleaner. Check out the Ecogeek Link: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1931/77/

Finally, an interesting New York Times piece on the Pickens Plan: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27friedman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin Yes, he is planning to show fossil fuel the fist. Life is good!