Alternative fuels from waste

Yesterday I swept my terrace - or rather part of my terrace. And I carried three buckets of dry leaves and dumped them. 3 buckets from half my terrace! Collected in a single week. 

OK, there are certain factors here - as the new leaves are growing in this spring, the tree might be shedding more leaves. Also we have two large mango trees in our compound.

But the point is -  most Bangalore roads are flooded with dry leaves. Which are religiously swept and cleaned by men and women every morning. And occasionally also by workers from Bangalore municipality.  

But what if these leaves are collected and used as a fuel? What if a sweeper machine comes to roads each day, collects these leaves, makes fuel from them and sells them to hotels, restaurants etc? There by beautifying the city, bringing relief to citizens and reduce the dependence on fossil fuels and evil greedy nations?

No, it is not a wild dream inspired by a youtube short. Because there are such pellet making machines available in the market  - some of them even from India. BBMP - bangalore muncipality or even private contractors can buy such machines and profit from literal waste. 

Read this news about IIT Bombay is using the dry leaves as fuel  

The second waste from homes is wet waste. And its solution is biogas. We older folk remember gobas gas plants - which were subsidized by the governments - which were installed in many rural homes in the 70s and 80s. It was labor intensive back then- cow dung was to be made into a slurry and fed to the machine. And the flame would not be as strong as LPG. But surely was good enough for many many rural homes. 

Now the same bio gas can be produced by urban wet waste - which in turn can be sent to homes using pipelines. If that is difficult (it is not impossible), it can be sold in cylinders to interested folk. 

And what happened to the solar cookers and ovens? The existing models may be inefficient - but certainly the smart people of our country can innovate and produce more user friendly, efficient models. 

So, please, please folks let us move away from fossil fuels, let us remove the dirt and waste from our roads and be energy self-sufficient.  So that global turbulence does not make our country suffer.  

Guess what? The same day I posted this, there was a news clip which said that Karnataka govt is increasing the number of biogas units in GBA  . Bhagawan sunta hai - koi aur sune ha na sune!

Also read : From waste to worth