In the 1970s when the Germans introduced biodigester septic tank (BST) technology – a money-saving way to solve the acute waste water disposal practices in Jamaica – it was an idea whose time had not yet come.

Three decades later, the state-run Scientific Research Council (SRC) is getting ready to embark on an aggressive promotion of its biodigester septic tank system, hoping to cash in on the many spin-off benefits.

SRC executive director, Dr Audia Barnett, is enthusiastic about the technology: “.You are treating your waste water. You are getting gas, which you can use for cooking. You are getting water you can use for irrigation and you are getting literally no waste,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“There’s practically no (need for) maintenance. It’s a system that my staff likes to call ‘set it and forget it’. It’s not like the septic tank that you have to be pumping every now and again,” Barnett said.

The SRC is reporting that there has been renewed interest in BSTs, as they are called. “We have seen a resurgence… of interest in our BSTs, both at the residential level and at the industrial level,” said Barnett.

It is interest that Barnett hopes to take advantage of over the next couple of months as her agency tackles the island’s capacity to properly dispose of waste water while increasing the financial earnings of the SRC.

“We are going to be going through a significant promotion and marketing campaign this year for our hotel industry and our developers to sensitise them to the benefits of the anaerobic (without air condition) technology,” she disclosed.

In addition, she said, the SRC marketers would target players within the island’s manufacturing industry, stressing that it was increasingly important to achieve greener production, especially if they were to succeed in international trade.

“We want the manufacturing industry, and especially the food industry, to be able to put in these units and enable us to be more green in our production,” she said. “When you are exporting products, one of the criteria that the international market is looking for is how green is your production, how environmentally-friendly it was produced. So, we feel we are on to a good thing in terms of serving various people,” Barnett continued.

The BST is an on-site sanitation unit that utilises anaerobic technology that facilitates the disposal of waste water without the use of oxygen. The unit – which costs between $150,500 and $1.5 million to construct – disposes of toilet (black) waste water, in addition to kitchen and bathroom (grey) water, within a closed system.

Desmond Clarke, the chief public health inspector for St James, said Jamaicans had a problem with how they disposed of waste water, and he indicated that the BST was among the alternatives open to them to achieve improvements in this area.

“The truth of the matter is that if we manage the thing properly it wouldn’t be a problem. But… we have waste coming from properties onto the street… We are very concerned about that,” Clarke told the newspaper.

Clarke said that even when waste water was contained within premises, which was desirable, there was still the potential problem of contaminating or polluting the ground water table, depending on the permeability of the soil (how rapidly water goes through it). This posed serious health risks.

The choice, Clarke added, was either to hook up to the municipal water supply system or to adopt a biodigester septic tank. “The ideal thing is to get it into the municipality waste system where it can be properly harnessed and treated… Based on information I have received on the biodigester, we have a lot to gain when we go that route because we solve one problem, and in the process, save some money,” argued the chief public health inspector.

The real saving to households and businesses comes with the elimination of the repeated maintenance costs associated with traditional waste water treatment methods like the septic tank soak-away system commonly used. Further, there are a range of bi-products like biogas that are produced. Biogas can be used in place of the expensive liquid petroleum gas (LPG).

Several countries in Europe and Latin America utilise the technology for their environmentally-friendly disposal of waste, and for irrigation. In addition, the process generates organic fertiliser and biogas by allowing naturally occurring bacteria to break down solid waste.

The potential for using the system in Jamaica is huge, as there are only just over a dozen biodigesters installed in the island, with several reported success cases. These include the John Bascoe Boys’ Home at Hatfield in Manchester. There, food crops are produced from treated organic waste, treated waste water is used for irrigation and biogas is used to cook meals and for other energy-related purposes.

The SRC has also applied the technology at its own food technology unit where it has met with success, Barnett said.

“We found that we were calling the septic tank people once a month to empty it (our old tank). Since we have put in our variation to the BST, we have found that there is practically no maintainance,” she said.

Only recently, she said, one was constructed by the SRC at the Caribbean Cement Company at Rockfort in east Kingston.

Barnett, making a sales pitch, said: “At the end of the day, there are a range of benefits to be derived, in addition to the fact that the unit itself is not difficult to construct. They are built on site, depending on the space available and the average size of the household or commercial entity.”