The Island School and The Embassy for the People’s Republic of China celebrated a growing partnership this summer as the Embassy welcomed Bahamian Environmental Steward Scholar alumni (BESS) and Island School alumni Garneisha Pinder (F’10) and Bradley Watson (F’08). Pinder a rising sophomore at The College of The Bahamas and Watson a rising senior at College of Charleston, attended the Training Course on Bio-gas Technology for Developing Countries on May 15th – July 9th. You can hear more about their experiences on our previous blogs about biodigestion, genetic engineering, and making biogas from straw.

The focus of the training was how to effectively create and utilize bio-gas—a process which takes organic wastes like sewage and agricultural runoff and converts them into methane gas, a clean-burning fuel with many applications, such as cooking and heating. This end product is a renewable energy source for both urban and rural areas of China and can be applied anywhere else in the world.

The partnership between the The Embassy for the People’s Republic of China and The the Island School has continued to grow since a visit to campus by the His Excellency Hu Shan last April. During the visit, His Excellency Hu Shan helped open the Cape Eleuthera Institute’s Hallig House and toured the school’s pilot first-in-The-Bahamas biodigester and biodiesel facilities. The school plans to use both human and pig waste to generate enough energy for cooking food and heating biodiesel. Seeing the work being done at the Island School prompted the Ambassador to offer scholarships to two Bahamian students for the 56-day training course.

The students’ aim of the program is to share and implement the renewable energy technologies that they they learned in China in their local communities and throughout The Bahamas. Both Pinder and Watson were exceedingly grateful for the opportunity and experience. “We learned so much about sustainable energy production, with applications for right here in The Bahamas, and I’m excited to put it into practise,  Development in industry, and agriculture should not compromise the environment and I can see biodigestion technology playing a part in reducing the negative impact such development can have on countries like the Bahamas.” said Watson.

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This spring CEI and Island School put biodigestion on the map for The Bahamas. We’ve found a way to treat our waste and generate more renewable energy, in addition to getting added utility from our water. The process of biodigestion  generates energy while simultaneously eliminating odors and pathogens from organic waste streams; we ran some tests last week to find out just how well our newest system was working. Through applying some basic laboratory tests, we found that our biodigester has successfully eliminated all harmful bacteria from our waste water, including E. coli. Knowing that our water is safe for human contact applications, we can now apply the effluent from our biodigestion system to food producing trees and crops in the orchard and around campus. With the luck of some good weather, we can begin making more food more quickly, closing the loop between ample waste management and food production.

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This project’s startup was subsidized by the government and encourages farmers in this semi- rural community to transport their waste straw to the plant instead of burning it by offering them bio- gas at production cost. This production cost is very low because the system only requires two people to run it. On the other hand customers who do not contribute straw to the system must purchase Bio-Gas from this plant at a price slightly less than what they would pay for Natural Gas. Customers access the biogas they purchase through a distribution grid for use as cooking fuel etc.

Another note about this community is that it is near the airport and farmers used to burn their straw, which could be considered a post-harvest crop residue, instead of trucking it away. Another option they had was to truck the straw to a paper mill that would purchase it at a relatively low price. The competition between the biogas plant and the paper mill has increased the price of straw in the three years since the plant began gas production. The result is far less air pollution from burning straw and farmers can earn more money for their crops. The digested straw also serves as a good fertilizer and farmers can pick it up at a lower cost.

As countries develop and industrialize people tend to leave rural areas for urban ones in search of a better quality of life. Sadly these first generations of urbanites are often subjected to discrimination when the reach the city due them speaking a different dialect or lacking the quality or level of education a city dweller may have. They may lack the social support network they need in this new home as they search for work and raise children, and many are forced to leave their children behind. Considering this I can truly appreciate the benefits of Bio-Gas production and any other means of improving the quality of life of the rural population. Visiting rural areas has been one of the highlights of this trip for me, the air is fresh, the roads aren’t as hectic, and the people take the time to smile and try to get to know you if you make the first step.

Much Love,

Bradley

Well my friend from Tanzania’s proposition is that we engineer soy bean plants to grow under lower light conditions or alter them in some other way so that they can compete with other plants grown in the same system. He wants to use the fertile soil created by these legumes to grow wheat at the same time for example. We don’t have the time to selectively breed a new variety of soy bean and/or wheat to provide the amounts of food we need these days but GMOs could help us achieve these goals sooner. I had never thought of them this way.

Today’s lecture was on the bacteria and archaea that produce the methane gas in a biodigester and the speaker, Dr. Lei Cheng, showed a graph of methane production against time for naturally occurring microbes and GMOs. The GMOs far out did the naturally occurring strains in gas produced per unit time, no surprise there. These GMOs could help us turn wood chips, newspaper, and straw into biogas much faster than we can now. They could make biogas production more economically feasible and push these projects beyond government subsidization. How could I avoid GMOs now?

The last and most compelling use for GMOs came from Mr. Tanzania again (he is a patriot). He mentioned the possible use of genetically modified microbes that feed on the components that make up landmines. These organisms would be modified to glow under UV light. If you seed a minefield with these guys and come back a week later with a UV light you should be able to find the spots where colonies have formed on their food source, land mines. So many countries and people suffer from these death fields left behind after conflicts. Some much money goes into training dogs and even rodents to search for mines. Useful farmland goes to waste and young, innocent children loose limbs to these hidden weapons years after the political side of the conflict has been put to rest.

If these are the possible uses for GMOs I say go for it, and quickly. The thing is, we need all the biodiversity we can save to use for our modifications.

On my return from a semester of studying Buddhism and Plant Taxonomy at the College of Charleston I received an email offering me an opportunity to go to China and study Biogas production at the BIOMA institute. At first I was filled with disbelief and then excitement took its place. This course that the Chinese Government offered for two Bahamian students would include people from other developing countries like Dominica, Columbia, Ghana, Niger, Venezuela, Nepal, Tanzania, and others. The last time I heard about biogas production was at the Island School while I was mentoring students during its first summer semester as the first stages of their bio digestion project began. The first time I was exposed to the concept of producing methane gas from organic wastes like sewage and agricultural by-products must have been in some documentary or reading that is now only a foggy memory. I had no idea that I would get a chance to gain a technical understanding of how these systems work from such seasoned practitioners as the professors of the BIOMA Institute who had taught 47 of these courses previously. With my goal of improving the sustainability of the Bahamian lifestyle in mind I could hardly imagine all the benefits of two young scientists being exposed to such a program, and for 56 days!

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One of the benefits I could imagine was an improved waste treatment system to reduce eutrophication of our reef ecosystems due to the “soak away” systems conventionally used on our islands. Another was the ability to produce methane gas on family islands reducing their dependence on and importation of propane gas for cooking fuel. The course would be worthwhile even if a bio-digester simply provided a use for all the food “waste” that would be discarded otherwise, even though it was originally imported at a high economic and environmental cost when it was considered useful food. The immense responsibility of implementing such systems made this opportunity a great honor, and one I could not turn down no matter how much anxiety I felt.

Now here I am in China after having my eyes opened to the practicality, beauty, and necessity of economically, socially and environmentally sustainable systems at the Island School. Although I am intimidated by the qualifications of my classmates my experiences as an intern at the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) add to my confidence in this research oriented setting. After working with the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation (BREEF) I am excited about the challenge of encouraging the implementation of small scale bio-digestion systems in any practical application in the Bahamas. I just hope I can live up to the expectations of my fellow Bahamians, and the others who have invested their time and resources in my education and the development of sustainable systems our country as I act as an ambassador of my government on this course and when I return to our shores.

Thinking of Home,

Bradley Watson

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Did you know that 5.2 million people die every year from waste related diseases? Now you do! This is a result of irresponsible and inappropriate global waste management – 50% of which is organic and 35% is unsorted recyclables. This is becoming a major problem in both developed and less developed countries with the latter usually suffering the consequences. Developed countries like the US often dump their trash in less developed countries that cannot always meet the waste demands. People have been trying to find alternative ways to dispose of waste more responsibly and sustainably. To solve this crisis, scientists turned to Nature for a solution – creating an emerging field known as biomimicry, which copies Nature’s processes to make the world a better place for humans. From this, a solution arose: Biodigestion. Biodigestion is the production of biogas and fertilizer in an anaerobic setting from organic waste. In other words biodigestion takes poop and turns it into usable energy and rich fertilizer.

The Island School, despite its attempt to be sustainable faces a major problem: human waste management. Twice a year, the school’s septic tank is emptied and its contents are dumped into local Bahamian landfills. Biodigestion gives The Island School an opportunity to get rid of its waste while solving other issues such as energy and food production. The clean energy produced by the digester can be used for cooking, running cars and much more. The fertilizer produced also contributes to the improvement of soil quality, which, in turn, optimizes food production. The many benefits of a biodigester make it the ideal solution.