The earth gives us food, water, protection and energy to satisfy our basic needs. In nature everything works in cycles, for this reason ecosystems depend on each other in order to produce and maintain these resources. Within these cycles the word waste does not exist because the surplus of one element of the chain is the food of another; this principle is just what we must replicate to understand our role as human beings within earth ecosystems.
Energy is one of the most important resources that the earth provide to us, the way in which we use and consume energy these days, affects our health, our way of life, affects the way we live daily; for this reason, it becomes so important for human existence. If we change the way we consume and generate energy that completely changes the way we see the world. With clean, renewable and affordable sources of energy, life quality of people can improve significantly.
In Sistema.bio we seek to redefine the concept of waste, because we believe that, like in nature, we must take advantage of the waste of a system to create value again. Sistema.bio is a social enterprise dedicated to the manufacture, sale and installation of biodigesters for small and medium agricultural farmers. The biodigesters are hermetically sealed reactors where animal manure is introduced, the bacteria that live in the manure decompose the material inside the container producing biogas and organic fertilizer. In fact, the planet earth is the largest bio-digester that exists in the universe, and thanks to this humanity owes its existence.
We seek that farmers take advantage of the resources of their farms to make them more productive in a sustainable way. With digesters they are able to take advantage of the manure that was once a source of infection, giving an adequate treatment to the waste and preventing greenhouse gases generation and use them to produce clean and accessible energy for rural population homes, displacing energy sources that damage health such as coal or firewood that are still used in some areas of Latin America and Africa to cover up to 70% of the energy use of their homes.
At the same time, the other product of the biodigester, the organic fertilizer, helps to return nutrients to the soil so that farmers can increase their crops and displace chemical fertilizers that previously damaged the soil and contaminated the water. The extra food that they produce with the fertilizer serves to feed the animals or they become an extra income for the families, making the biodigesters help families to generate a cycle of sustainable production, where, as in nature, waste of one ecosystem is the input of another.
Although the production of clean energy is the most immediate benefit of the technology, the implementation of biodigesters has an impact and reach in all the sustainable development goals of the UN to the help on the eradication of poverty generating extra income for families with the increase of its production, fight against hunger, good health, potable water, sanitation and renewable energies.
By creating a sustainable and responsible chain of consumption and production, biodigesters help us understand our role within the earth as part of a cycle where there is no waste, there are only resources and learning that our activities can mitigate their negative impact. Throughout 8 years of work we have installed almost 4 thousand biodigesters in Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Kenya and India; achieving that 23 thousand people can use clean and renewable energy; treating 6.5 million tons of waste preventing the release of more than 83 thousand tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and using the manure to fertilize more than 120 thousand hectares per year.
On this day at Sistema.bio we seek to raise awareness of this environmental impact we have as human beings and the responsibility we have to mitigate the negative impact of our activities by giving them a natural cycle, we are a strong influence within ecosystems, however, we have to keep learning. In Sistema.bio we not only celebrate one day to the earth, in Sistema.bio we work every day for the land, with the land and with the people who work the land in order to create a sustainable, empathetic and waste-free world.
