Page 130 - Climate Compliance

A large amount of kitchen waste in St. Vincent is disposed of on landfills or discarded into
the environment. This can cause public health hazards and diseases. Inadequate management
130 of waste also leads to polluting surface and groundwater and can promote breeding of flies,
mosquitoes, rats and other disease-bearing vectors. It also emits methane, which is a major
greenhouse gas that contributes to Global Warming.

Producing household renewable cooking gas thus has many benefits. Kitchen waste is organic
material that has high calorific and nutritive properties, which are valuable for microbes that are
converting the kitchen waste into methane.

Richmond Vale Academy has set up a small biogas digester which produces biogas from kitchen
waste. The biogas digester is designed from the indian model ARTI, but will be modified to

reduce odor; to minimize the escape of methane gas and to prevent mosquito breeding.

The design will first be developed, implemented and tried out at RVA and later introduced in the

community. The first 5 units will be set up in 2017. After a trial period and the evident success,
new grants and partnerships will be made for further implementation.

The system works by applying 1.5 kilo of normal kitchen waste with 15 litres of water into a
digester or fermenter where the organic matter is decomposed. This in an anaerobic process and
ends up producing 5 hours of methane gas which can be used for cooking.