Pune: ‘Niwara’, one of the oldestold-age homes in the city, is reviving its biogas plant for emergency situations amid the regulation of LPG cylinders supply because of the ongoing conflict in West Asia.Vijay Belsare, the executive secretary of the trust that runs Niwara, told TOI, “We have a stock of LPG cylinders for cooking at present. But when we tried to book new cylinders, we did not get a response from the gas agency. Therefore, we decided to revive our biogas plant operations to keep it ready to tackle any emergency situations.”The trustees of the home have appealed to people to provide them biodegradable waste to generate biogas to meet their cooking needs.”The generation of bio-waste within the old-age home is less, though we have a big area for use. Therefore, we are appealing to residents to donate bio-waste to us so that we can produce more biogas,” said another trustee of Niwara.Founded over 160 years ago, Niwara installed the biogas plant nearly four years ago. Accordingto the trustees, they are currently dependent on domestic gas cylinders for daily cooking. In the wake of curbs on cylinders supply, they now intend to shift some of their cooking activities to biogas.The trustees said they prepared three meals for 170 inmates on a daily basis. They require a domestic cylinder every day.“They all are senior citizens and some of them have health issues. We have to ensure that they get healthy food to keep their health parameters under control. They cannot afford to miss any of the meals during the day. Therefore, as a contingencyplan, we will keep our biogas plant in operational mode,” Belsare said.
