IBTimes.com

Anyone who owns a dog knows the chore of taking walks, and in some cities, cleaning up. But what if your best friend also produced cleaner energy?

Conceptual artist Matthew Mazzotta came up with an answer. He welded together a pipe and a large tank, and created the Park Spark project. Using dog waste for fuel, the tank produces methane -- otherwise known as natural gas.

Mazzotta, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., says he got the idea when he was sitting in a dog run at a local park. He had been to India in 2009, when he noticed that people used animal waste such as cow dung for fuel. "I looked at all this dog waste, and thought that in other countries people use that for energy."

The trip to India was part of his graduate studies at MIT, where he was with a group looking at how people use technology, and what kinds of technology worked best for certain communities. Indian farmers have made use of the methane gas from dung for years, as the technology only requires that the waste in the digester be cut off from the outside air. In India, the tanks - actually brick structures -- are underground.

In a digester, there is the waste, which is mixed with water to form a slurry. At that point, the natural bacteria present will take over, generating methane. The only attention from people the digester needs is that the contents be stirred, and Mazzotta designed it so it can be done without opening the tank. The digesters could be located in cities and used to run streetlights nearby, or even supply natural gas generally.

Additional tanks can be added, to increase capacity. At the end of the chain of tanks one could add a last waste tank, which would work just like a regular septic tank and would be replaced at intervals.

The only drawback to the technology is the bags that the waste goes in - it has to be biodegradable. Many so-called biodegradable plastics on the market are not really so, Mazzotta says. Instead, the plastic simply breaks up. One of his projects is to find out if people in the park, when cleaning up after their dogs, could be convinced to use something other than the usual plastic bag.

But that, he says, is offset by the big benefits such projects have. One is reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Although methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, when burned it produces carbon dioxide and water. Currently methane is mostly produced by farms and the landfills where the dog waste from cities ends up. Mazzotta says digesters in many cities that will eliminate some of the problem. "We already make mini-digesters whenever we bag the waste and send it to a landfill," he said. "Why not use the energy instead?"

Since he set up his first digester in Cambridge, Mazzotta says he has gotten calls and emails from a number of cities and towns that are interested, via The Park Spark project's web site. Among them are Madison, Wis., and Portland, Ore.

Mazzotta said he wants to see if he can get local residents involved in setting up their own digesters, because he wants more than energy from his idea. By getting communities involved with the waste management, he wants people to re-think the way they interact with their environment, as well as become more conscious of energy use.

"It's a living system that needs maintenance, and I feel it's more exciting when it's done by the local neighborhood."

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