Saving environment with cow dung

Eunice Luhanga, a cook, lit a faint blue flame over one of two gas stoves in a kitchen at Eva Demaya Centre in Rumphi to start preparing lunch for the employees and nursery school pupils.

Eva Demaya Centre once powered by costly environmentally-damaging firewood, the kitchen now runs on a free, renewable resource—the waste from nearly 20 cattle the centre keeps.

The biogas kitchen is smoke free, unlike the choking wood fire smog of other firewood-powered kitchens.

Now Luhanga enjoys a hygienic cooking environment that produces no smoke, dangerous to human health.

“In the past, I used to suffer from coughs because of the smoke I inhaled while cooking. Now I am a healthy woman. The biogas-powered stoves produce no smoke and is very effective because two meals can be cooked at the same time,” she said as she slowly placed a huge pot on the blue flame.

Such has been the story of Luhanga since 2008. She is a cook at Eva Demaya Centre, a local non-governmental organisation based at Luviri in Rumphi. She joined the centre as a cook in 2006 when her source of energy to cook for the employees, nursery pupils and patients were loads of firewood.

Luhanga thanked the Malawi Environmental Endowment Trust (Meet) for financial support towards the construction of the biogas facility. Meet promotes renewable energy such as biogas facilities which are seen as a pragmatic solution for a country which lacks a power infrastructure and has no natural oil or gas reserves.

Nyuma Gondwe, an environmental protection officer at the centre, explained that the biogas plant is helping in preserving and protecting the environment.

“The centre decided to have a biogas cooking facility on its premises as an alternative to firewood and we also use it as an educational tool.

“Before the installation of the biogas facility, the centre was using large amounts of firewood for cooking and was thus contributing to deforestation. Today, it has reduced the use of firewood and thus is an effective antidote to deforestation in the surrounding areas,” said Gondwe.

According to a report titled Trees on Farm: Removing the Obstacle to Enterprise by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Malawi loses about 100 000 hectares per year of tree cover, considered the highest in Sadc region.

The Malawi Poverty and Environment Initiative (2011) estimated that flood-related economic costs as a result of deforestation may be anything up to $1 million per year.

Gondwe said since 2008 the centre is saving over K10 000 monthly which was used to purchase firewood.

Today, Gondwe goes out twice a week to educate local communities about deforestation and its consequences.

Generally, it is known that as the environment degrades, there are consequences that are observed in energy and agricultural systems.

“A simple example of rural communities depending on biomass as their main source of energy will face energy challenges because of deforestation.

“Population growth and the pressures associated with it have resulted in most of the hills being laid bare in most of the catchment areas of the rivers. People have been opening up gardens in areas previously protected. In addition, the use of firewood and charcoal both as a household energy source and for business has depleted the forests. This has resulted in more soils being prone to erosion,” said Gondwe.

She added that the biogas plant is also used as a demonstration unit for people around the centre to encourage those with cattle to consider using dung instead of firewood or charcoal “and if these efforts are successful, deforestation will be reduced.”

Rhollent Kumwenda a biogas technician said the country has favourable conditions for the application of biogas technologies.

“Biogas digesters have been constructed in a number of areas as pilot projects for the rural communities with variable success levels but uptake of the technology remains a challenge to date,” said Kumwenda.

He pointed out that apart from the tradition of keeping cattle for prestige, farmers can also utilise the dung to power their homes.

But the other challenge is that the technology is relatively expensive, he said.

“A complete structure requires at least 40 bags of cement, which is an enormous amount of money. But the benefits are huge. They range from the health of cooks to saving forests from further destruction,” he said.

In villages across Malawi, access to basic energy services is limited or not available at all. As such, high levels of deforestation have been the subject of intense debate at policy, planning and community levels.

Between 2001 and 2009 Malawi lost approximately 100 000 hectares of forest per year or 3.49 percent annually, experts say.

With high deforestation rates, Malawi faces a precarious future. High levels of deforestation have been attributed to rapid growth among rural populations; entrenched rural poverty, lack of food security; biomass use—especially for energy – that now exceeds productive capacity in some areas; and an increasingly unpredictable climate.

From 2008, statistics show that about 90 percent of Malawi’s population use wood for fuel and charcoal production, accounting for about 88.5 percent of the country’s energy requirements. Other sources are petroleum which accounts for 6.4 percent, electricity which accounts for 2.8 percent while coal accounts for 2.4 percent.

Renewable energy such as biogas, therefore, is a new field and important for the long-term sustainability of Malawian energy supplies as well as development of its economy.