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'Trash is gold' as Benin community turns waste into biogasAugust 22, 2018 by Josué Mehouenou Garbage has never smelled so sweet for a small village in southern Benin since it opened a pilot waste treatment centre to turn household rubbish into gas—and cash."Our trash has become gold. We no longer throw it into the bush. We use it to make money," beams Alphonse Ago, who lives next to the centre in Houegbo village.ReBin, a Swiss foundation for sustainable development, built the 1.3-hectare (3.2-acre) facility, which every week turns around six tonnes of organic waste into 200 cubic metres of biogas—saving some 164 tonnes of wood from being used to make charcoal.The centre, which opened late last year, also plans to produce around 400 tonnes of organic fertiliser per year. ...It was the massive amounts of waste such as pineapple skins that originally caught the attention of ReBin's founder, Mark Giannelli, and inspired him to set up the treatment centre in Houegbo."I saw this not as a problem, but as an opportunity, and I thought it was a goldmine," Giannelli told AFP.Benin is Africa's fourth-biggest exporter of pineapples. And in Houegbo, which has one of the busiest markets in the region, local sources estimate that more than a tonne of waste is generated every day from that fruit alone. ...The goal is to establish "a real economy that serves the population and protects the environment," he says. "We have to take the problems locally and adapt them to local solutions." ...
Yes, it is all unicorns farting rainbows, that is, until they discover that this method is more expensive than propane derived from natural gas.......
As I read it, the process creates liquid gas they take home to use in their homes for cooking, etc.
