food (5)

Niyamgiri Adivasi Food Festival Feb 2014

Dear All,

I have been fortunate to attend this important tribal gathering in the foothills of Niyamgiri, Rayagada District Odisha, to make a documentary film on the proceedings.

Please find attached detailed report and article on the Adivasi Food Festival, Feb 2014

Couple of Photos attached. Feel free to translate, distribute and share among friends and network and if possible publish in vernacular and local languages.

Film screenings can be done, with sharing of experiences, do connect with me as required- Many thanks RagunathanTribal%20Food%20Festival%20Odisha%20Feb%202014.pdf3839118860?profile=original3839118838?profile=original3839118961?profile=original

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Dear All,

Please find attached an approach paper on Global Political Economy of Food & Options for Social Action in India 2013

Feel free to circulate, publish, translate, customize as required by local communities and conditions,

look forward to your valuable feedback, and hope as outlined in the paper, we shall soon, be cross-networked strongly irrespective of organizations, affiliation, profession, class, caste....as Food Matters after all, we live or die with Food..PE%20of%20Food%20Social%20Action%20India%202013.pdf

Raghunathan KC, Bangalore

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This blogpost is dedicated to a different breed of communicators (i.e. aside from those who write) on environmental issues.  I refer mostly to imagery and the people who created it.

In my search for information for an article or report, I have come across some really nice examples, which have inspired me to think, and indeed, even feel privileged to be connected to all matters environmental. I hope these examples will also inspire you in equally vibrant (if not more) ways. So, here goes (I am not listing these examples in any particular order):

#1: This was a great example of why "throwing away" is such a misnomer. Ironically, this poster was part of an ad campaign run by Shell (no paragon of virtue in environmental matters). It shows smokestacks "spewing out" flowers instead of gases.

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Above: Don't Throw Anything Away; there is No Away
(Courtesy(?): Shell)

My first point though is the fact that "there is no away". My second point here is that, unfortunately, a lot of feel-good campaigns (like this one) can be enviro-propaganda-cum-greenwash. The small print in the poster says that Shell uses its "waste carbon dioxide to grow flowers" and "waste sulphur to make super-strong concrete," which was strongly contested by complainants Friends of the Earth. So always think about what you see and try to gauge its real message before jumping to conclusions.

#2: This is a photograph taken by Chris Jordan. The photographer traveled to Midway Island, near the site of the pivotal World War II naval battle, to document the death of baby albatrosses on the island's nature reserve (if it can happen in a nature reserve, are there any safe places left?!).

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Above:  The parent birds are attracted to the colorful plastic trash in the water from the Pacific Trash Gyre, and feed it to their babies, with disastrous consequences. Jordan has said that the images show the actual contents in the birds' stomach, and has not been "moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way".

Moral of the story: reduce your use of plastic and recycle it as far as possible!

#3. This entry is really a photographic essay by Kalyan Varma, an award-winning wildlife photographer and film-maker from Bangalore. He currently freelances with the BBC Natural History and National Geographic Channel (India), and also works with grassroots NGO's to highlight environmental issues in India. I became a fan as soon as I saw it! To put in his words, "In the race to make every inch of our land 'productive' we have scarred the landscape forever. We dig, mine, scrape, plant, bore and drill the land. This essays shows some of these landscapes from the air." And what's more, these images are all earmarked under the Creative Commons License!

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Above: Landscrapes by Kalyan Varma. In this image, we see pits readied for planting trees. Dry thorn-scrub habitats without too many trees are natural too. However, the government does not realize that open forests like these are critical wildlife habitats and not waste land, and usually plant non-native species with commercial value.
(Courtesy: kalyanvarma.net)

#4: This image highlights the issue of organic food shams. Ironically, a lot of organic food produced in India makes it way to markets abroad, which can pay better prices for it. While there is a very small market for organic food in the country, it is miles behind that in countries such as the EU. However, notwithstanding its widespread availability, they have to grapple with other problems.
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Above: Why in the world is this chicken painting its (uh) toe claws? In the UK, low cost retailers have been known to bank on the good reputation of organic food to try and attract customers to their stores, in which they market other lower quality produce. With an estimated market of GBP 600 million, is it any wonder?
(Courtesy: www.greens-efa.org)

#5. I will end this post with another "Indian" image, but I am sure it resonates with equal verve in other communities being deprived of their land and water. It is from a documentary called "Drowned Out". It charts the story of an Adivasi (indigenous) family whose home was due to be flooded by the rising waters of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, India.

The documentary follows the villagers of Jalsindhi (a village in Madhya Pradesh on the banks of the Narmada River about 10 miles upstream from the Sardar Sarovar project) and narrates their battle against the dam. The government provides them no viable alternatives: move to a slum in the city, accept the government's offer of unusable land a hundred miles away, or a small sum of money in compensation for their river-side land. The film documents hunger strikes, rallies, and a six-year long Supreme Court case, and finally follows the villagers as the dam fills and the river starts to rise.
drowned+out.jpg
Above: An Indian family chooses to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam. I found this image particularly moving.
(Courtesy: Worldchanging.com)
Please feel free to share any images with an environmental bent, which have inspired (or even revolted) you. After all, it's not just about what you say; it's also about how you say (or rather, show) it.
This blogpost originally appeared on http://mahazareendastur.blogspot.in/.
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Food Waste to Energy - Indian Perspectives

 

Food Waste to Energy Conversion - Indian Perspectives

 

 

Setu Goyal 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Introduction

The problem of waste management runs across geographies and its gravest causal agent, i.e. urbanism, is a global phenomenon. However, its ramifications are relatively more pronounced in developing nations on account of improved standards of living and changing consumption patterns. The growing population and increasing consumer demand is leading to excessive consumption of available resources and generation of tremendous amount of different kind of wastes, which is emerging as a chronic problem in urban societies. Their efficient management is needed at the earliest to avoid numerous problems related to public and environmental health.

The waste management hierarchy suggests that reduce, reuse and recycling should always be given preference in a typical waste management system. However, these options cannot be applied uniformly for all kinds of wastes. For examples, organic waste is quite difficult to deal with using the conventional 3R strategy.  Of the different types of organic wastes available, food waste holds the highest potential in terms of economic exploitation as it contains high amount of carbon and can be efficiently converted into biogas and organic fertilizer.

Market Size

A consistent growth rate of 8 to 10 percent for India is symbolic of its increasing production and consumption trends.  The main reasons for such trends have been the increasing disposable incomes and the growing consumerism and urbanism. All this has significantly contributed to the growth and economic development of the country, apart from tremendous increase in waste generation across the country.

The amount of waste generated by any country is directly proportional to its population and the mean living standards of the people.  As per the last census of India, the Indian population was 1027 million with about 5161 urban cities and towns contributing up to 28% of the total population.  A constant rate of increase of about 30% per decade in the number of town/cities urbanized is something to be considered with utmost diligence, since it is the urban areas, which mostly contribute to the waste generation. The situation grows even starker from the observation that the per capita waste generation in India has been rising by about 1-1.3% annually over the past few decades and the population itself has been rising at an annual rate of 1.2-1.5%.

With organic or food waste being one of the main constituents of the total urban waste generated,  it not only makes it essential to seek means for its safe disposal but at the same time, reiterates the huge business potential that ensues the proper utilization of such a widely available potential energy/power resource.

Anaerobic Digestion Technology

Anaerobic digestion is a proven and commercially available technology to handle wastes having high carbon content. It is widely acknowledged as the best means to deal with organic waste in rural as well as urban areas. One of the major benefits of anaerobic digestion is its almost negative impact on the environment since it saves on emissions which would have been caused if the organic waste was dumped into landfills or an equivalent amount of power would be generated using conventional fossil fuel based resources. Another important feature is its scalability and ability to accept varied types of biomass. World over, the technology has been reaching newer and higher scales, with plants of capacity 300 tonnes per day and above already in operation in countries like Austria, Germany, Sweden and Italy.


Process Description

The feedstock to be utlized, e.g. organic waste from various sources, is first collected and then passed through a shredder to reduce the minimum particle size. The homogenated mass is then moved to a mixing tank, wherein it is mixed with the recirculated digestate to bring it in contact with some of the wore out/used microbial biomass to increase the rate of biochemical degradation in the subsequent steps and also to make the input feed more acclimatized to the system or process requirements. This homogenate along with the recirculated digestate from the mixing tank, which is responsible for maintaining the adequate solid content in the feed in terms of volume, is then transferred to a storage tank. The main purpose of placing another tank in between the mixing tank and main bio-digester is to maintain an input reservoir in order to account for a few days of unavailability in feedstock. In certain cases of large-scale power application of this technology, waste heat is utilized from the gas engine exhaust and fed to the storage tank to double it up as a pre-digester by facilitating the growth of thermophilic bacterias and elimination of any pathogens.

 

 

The feed is then directed into the anaerobic digester. The most commonly used biogas plants for power generation using biogas are the Continiuous Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTR). These reactors involve anaerobic digestion at mesophillic temperaturres and generally have a retention time of about 20-25 days. For smaller scales and other domestic and thermal applications of biogas, other reactors are also commercially available like the floating drum KVIC model, fixed dome type model by TERI, the Janata model or the TERI Enhanced Acidification and Methanation (TEAM) setup which is essentially Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket Reactors (UASB).

The quality and quantum of biogass depends on a variety of factors like the technology used, type of waste, moisture content, volatile matter, ash content, C/N ratio etc. An important consideration while generating power using biogas is the desulphurization of the gas. Anaerobic process results in the formation of H2S which on combustion generates SO2. It is not only corrosive to the gas engine but also harmful to the environment. To tackle this situation, chemical or biological desulphurization is carried out. The chemical desulphurization involves the use of FeCl2 in which chloride is replaced by sulphur owing to the higher affinity of the latter with Iron. Biological desulphurization on the other hand, utilizes the sulphur oxidizing bacteria and converts hydrogen sulphide into elemental sulphur, in the presence of air.

An important component of a typical biogas facility is the gas holder which is used to maintain a buffer between the production and consumption rates of the biogas. The gas is drawn into the gas engine from the gas holder and the waste heat generated is utilized to improve the overall efficiency of the system by directing it through the pre digester and the main digester.

Since the water effluent from such a process is expected to possess high BOD and COD characters, the need of a dedicated effluent treatment plant is ineluctable.  This waste water is mainly obtained after the dewatering of the slurry obtained from the above process. The solid content in the slurry increases after going through the de-watering stage in multiple stage screw-presses and it can be sold as high quality compost in the market.

Present Scenario

Although the Municipal Solid Waste Management Directive (2000) mandates source segregation of waste which is easily biodegradable in nature, in reality it has not been able to find widespread implementation till now. The major reasons include lack of proper implementation and reporting mechanism, and lower degree of awareness among the people in general. In addition, urban waste in India is also mixed with a huge amount of rubble, construction and demolition waste and other such wastes, which render the food-waste unsuitable for subsequent conversion to energy.

Most of the organic waste generated in the country is either being dumped into the landfills or composted or sent to piggeries. It is a sheer waste of such biodegradable waste capable of generating energy to be sent into the landfills. There it is not only responsible for large scale green house gas emissions, but also becomes a health hazard and creates terrestrial pollution.

There are numerous places which are the sources of large amounts of food waste and hence a proper food-waste management strategy needs to be devised for them to make sure that either they are disposed off in a safe manner or utilized efficiently. These places include hotels, restaurants, malls, residential societies, college/school/office canteens, religious mass cooking places, airline caterers, food and meat processing industries and vegetable markets which generate organic waste of considerable quantum on a daily basis.

Conclusion

The anaerobic digestion technology is highly apt in dealing with the chronic problem of organic waste management in urban societies. Although the technology is commercially viable in the longer run, the high initial capital cost is a major hurdle towards its proliferation. The onus is on the governments to create awareness and promote such technologies in a sustainable manner. At the same time, entrepreneurs, non-governmental organizations and environmental agencies should also take inspiration from successful food waste-to-energy projects in other countries and try to set up such facilities in Indian cities and towns.

References

  1. http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Newsletters/Newsletter_Links/eci_2.htm
  2. http://www.scribd.com/doc/27348441/Urbanization-in-India
  3. http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/swm_in_india.pdf
  4. http://www.adb.org/Documents/Events/2005/Sanitation-Wastewater-Management/paper-kumar.pdf
  5. http://www.nls.ac.in/CEERA/ceerafeb04/html/documents/Muncipalsoildwaste.htm
  6. http://www.teda.gov.in/page/Bio-wastetoenergy.htm
  7. http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=13488
  8. http://www.uperc.org/olduperc/Explanatory%20Memorandum.pdf
  9. http://www.mnre.gov.in/annualreport/2009-10EN/Chapter%205/chapter%205_1.htm

 

About the Author

Setu Goyal is pursuing Masters Program in Renewable Energy Engineering and Management at the TERI University (New Delhi), and has an entrepreneurial zeal to improve waste management and renewable energy scenarios in developing countries. He can be reached at setu.goyal@gmail.com

 

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