Pig shit fuels Chinese homes

The future has arrived.

A recent Mirror cover story ["Pig power," Dec. 10] asked the question: Is pig manure the future of alternative energy? According to Tooker Gomberg, the happy-go-lucky ecological crusader and political gadfly, Chinese families are already using pig manure to fuel all their cooking and lighting needs.

"All you really need is three or four pigs," says Gomberg, who toured China as part of his Greenspiration Odyssey, a partially government-funded bicycle trip around the world in search of ecologically sound alternatives. "They throw it all into a tank along with their own excrement, attach a plastic pipe to the top, and funnel it into gas lamps and stoves in the house. It's methane, so it burns clean. And it saves forests, because it keeps people from cutting down trees as fuel for cooking."

Gomberg will be heading out on the next leg of the Greenspiration Odyssey in April. This time, Gomberg will travel from coast to coast for Greenspiration Canada.

In the meantime, Gomberg will be at Concordia University next Tuesday (March 9) to present slides and video clips from the Greenspiration Asia tour. Exact time and location TBA.

--Philip Preville