Christmas spririt to India - We are a donating biogas plant to five families

Because of the successful biogas project we have implemented this year, we have decided to donate a biogas plant to five new families this Christmas.

UFF’s biogas plant project in India Gasum has co-supported the setup of biogas plants for five Indian families in 2015. As the biogas project has been a great success, Gasum is donating a biogas plant to five more Indian families this Christmas. The new biogas plants will be constructed during 2015.

The Gasum-supported biogas plants are part of the second three-year biogas project implemented by UFF and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in Dausa, India. The previous project provided this poor rural area with 200 biogas units in 2010–2012. The excellent outcome inspired a continuation to this project that is important for the natural environment as well as human wellbeing. The continuation project launched in 2014 will ensure the flawless operation of the units set up previously and build 405 more biogas units.

UFF cooperates with Humana People to People India in the construction of the biogas plants. The families receiving biogas plants are farmers, and each unit is designed to serve a household with 8–12 members. To be eligible, the families must have four heads of cattle to produce enough dung for use as raw material in biogas production.

Biogas project has direct impacts on people’s wellbeing

The project not only aims for improved access to income for rural families but also for women’s empowerment and health promotion through biogas. The concrete advantages of the biogas plant project can be seen immediately: using biogas instead of wood as a household fuel reduces indoor air pollution, which has a direct impact on family health. Women and girls spending a lot of time indoors doing domestic work are happy as smoke caused by wood-burning no longer causes eye diseases and breathing is easier. The female members of the family no longer need to spend hours on gathering wood. Instead, they can focus on looking after their family. Biogas also enables light generation inside the home, so children and young people are also able to study in the evenings.

Biogas plants produce slurry as a by-product, which is used as a fertilizer to improve the soil and reduce the need for watering, energy and chemical fertilizers. This results in savings for the farmer families as fertilizers are expensive in India and slurry improves agricultural productivity.