The city of Franca is an example of basic sanitation in Brazil. In addition to providing universal treated water and sewage to its 352,500 inhabitants, it extracts biogas from wastewater and refines it to fuel its own vehicles.
It is the “best energy,” according to its producers, but biogas from livestock waste still lacks an organized market that would allow it to take off and realize its potential in Brazil, the world's largest meat exporter.
The first five biomethane-fuelled buses in the Cuban municipality of Martí will not only be a milestone in the country but will also represent a solution to the serious problem of transportation, while reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and bolstering local development.
Garbage that has accumulated since 1991 in the two landfills in the municipality of Caucaia has become a biomethane deposit that supplies industrial and commercial companies, thermoelectric plants and homes in Ceará, a state in northeastern Brazil.
The increasing productivity with which humankind generates waste has gained at least one sustainable counterpart: the extraction of biogas from landfills, a growing activity in Brazil.