Delhi Gurudwaras that feed around 30,000 people daily decide to switch to biogas - a move that will help them manage kitchen waste, will be environment-friendly and will bring down the cost of preparing langar food.
Following the example set by Amritsar’s Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), and keeping in tune with implementing environmental best practices like switching to solar rooftops, the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee now plans on setting up biogas plants in gurudwara complexes across Delhi.
The form of energy created using waste in biogas is environment-friendly, non-polluting, and can greatly contribute to reducing greenhouse gases as they bring down our need to use fossil fuels. More importantly, it can also be procured easily and helps in reusing trash.
Every day, the gurudwaras in Delhi serve food to around 30,000 devotees. But to make food for so many people requires a lot of gas which is not very environmentally and pocket-friendly.
Reportedly, the committee had been challenged with the issue of waste management – quintals of kitchen waste like vegetables, fruit peels, and leftover langar food usually ends up in the trash every day. Once biogas plants are in place, this waste could be reused to generate bio-energy which could then help in cooking langar food in Gurudwaras.
Natural gas, the form of energy now used to cook langar food for people in Gurudwaras, is supplied through pipelines by IGL, and apart from it being environmentally damaging, it also is quite expensive. Opting for biogas would not only reduce the carbon footprint but also considerably cut down the cost of managing the kitchen, making it a more sustainable practice to adopt.
To flag the project off, the biogas plants will be set up at Delhi’s Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Sahib and Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, as the committee found these gurudwaras were generating the largest amount of biodegradable waste among all other gurudwaras in Delhi.