Low Cost Cooking Options in Nepal

Homemade rocket stoves like this can cook food with twigs and other plant debris.
Homemade rocket stoves like this can cook food with twigs and other plant debris.

“Due to the fuel crisis in Nepal now we don’t get gas for cooking. I just wanted to ask you if you have some idea regarding building a solar cooker. I did some search in google but I could not come up with a concrete idea. And yeah I have a methane gas chamber in my house. Do you have some idea to improve that as well because its not enough to cook 2 meals. Thank you.” Prateek

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Stacking Solutions

This drawing shows the stacking of solutions of a community store in rural Kenya.
This drawing shows the stacking of solutions of a community store in rural Kenya.

“Toilets, water, depleted tropical soils, and refrigeration are four of the myriad challenges of the developing world. Small fruit, vegetable, and meat sellers lose considerable stock to the sweltering heat. Farmers’ fields and drinking water get flooded by water contaminated with human feces. The water taps stop running for weeks at a time forcing people to drink fetid water. Consumers buy dubious products and suffer increased rates of sickness to top off the other challenges of poverty. Another challenge is processed goods, necessities such as soap or washing basins, cause money from a poor area to flow out to large foreign businesses. All of these challenges can be met by a community store.

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Muni Seva Ashram – the Green Ashram

Muni Seva Ashram in Gujarat, India has an impressive number of green features.
Muni Seva Ashram in Gujarat, India has an impressive number of green features.

“Muni Seva Ashram is an active agent in the drive for sustainable development, with large-scale interests in organic farming, agro forestry, horticulture, animal husbandry, solar energy, and biogas. This is also reflected in the Ashram’s new website address, Green Ashram.org

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Biotech India Biogas Plants

Turn household wastes (human wastes and food scraps) into clean burning biogas with $300-$400? (waiting for current price list) Biotech biogas plants, or make one yourself. Biotech also sells waste to electricity plants. Payback period is only 2-3 years. They now mass produce their biogas plants out of PVC and aim to sell one to every household in India as a standard commodity.

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Small-scale Biogas Plants

Simple sketch of household biogas plant
Simple sketch of household biogas plant

Our blog focuses on low cost, sustainable ways of building homes with local resources. It’s equally exciting and practical learning about alternatives to costly centralized grid systems (electrical, gas, sewer, water) that tend to lock people into the system and make them vulnerable to price controls. Biogas is one of many renewable energy systems that provide greater independence at very low cost. Biogas is especially practical in rural areas where running power and gas lines are cost prohibitive. Distributed systems such as biogas and other biofuels, solar water heaters, wood stoves, solar ovens, etc. located at or near the source typically keep functioning during times of emergencies. When a whole city or region is without power, water and sewer during a blizzard, your family can be safe and snug.

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Jean Pain’s Compost-based Bioenergy System


“Jean Pain (1930–1981) was a French innovator who developed a compost-based bioenergy system that produced 100% of his energy needs. He heated water to 60 degrees celsius at a rate of 4 litres a minute which he used for washing and heating. He also distilled enough methane to run an electricity generator, cooking elements, and power his truck. This method of creating usable energy from composting materials has come to be known as Jean Pain Composting, or the Jean Pain Method.

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