Half-way around the world, a couple in Peru is harnessing the power of guinea pig poop, to generate methane for their farm. We couldn’t make that up if we tried.
The couple are a pair of retired plant physiology professors who have taken to running a sustainable agriculture program in their very own villa called Casa Blanca. It’s a beautiful set of gardens complete with a lab for research. But the most curious thing is the thousand guinea pigs they raise. They have a special shed for them with small compartments separated by brickwork. The guinea pigs eat specialized plant waste, and in turn, produce an astonishing 3 tonnes of fecal matter per month.
They use around 200kg of the excrement to power their very own bio-digester which in turn produces 3 cubic meters of methane per day which they use for powering their villa. The rest of it is used for fertilizer that they sell to local farms.
