August 5, 2011
As a result of our Slovakia workshop, we held a biogas building workshop in Budapest, where I demonstrated the Solar CITIES IBC system for colder climates. I enjoyed the crowd sourcing and collective intelligence nature of the participants who came up with many great ideas for improvements!
We completed a insinkerator-based biogas system at the Godor Culture Center in Budapest (though sans manure and water). Kovách Eszter and Attila Mester did a masterful job of interweaving presentations, breakout-groups, panel discussions and actual BUILDING. As a result the two-day event was both informative and practical. Thank you guys, and thank you Hungary! Let us continue the momentum, transformation “demonstrations” from protests into true “demonstrations” of better ways of living!
Despite the enthusiasm for the project of transducing wastes into gas and fertility, the last message we got from our colleagues in Hungary was that they could not continue the project because “authorities” determined that biogas was somehow “too dangerous” to be brought to the Roma communities. They discouraged our stalwart innoventors and practitioners from going further.
But the beat does go on. The workshop was attended by Swiss Permaculturist Simon Westermann, who took what he learned back to the Damanhur Eco-village in Italy, center of the Global Eco-village Network (GEN), and their scientists built their own IBC based biodigester and are sharing it with the world.