Nuisance seaweed to be put to good use in Fiji

Transcript

Efforts are underway in Fiji to help communities power their homes and fertilise their crops with nuisance seaweed.

The pilot project at the University of the South Pacific could see whole villages ditching the use of polluting chemicals which are partly responsible for the increasing bloom of seaweed affecting beaches in Fiji's west.

Antoine N'Yeurt of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development told Sally Round seaweed is a good source of biomass.

ANTOINE N'YERT: Here in Fiji recently we have had quite a big problem with over-abundant seaweed. Communities have been coming to us saying they are finding a lot of seaweed washed up on their beaches especially in the Western Division and also on the southern coast of the main island. It was linked apparenty to pollution: sewage outfalls, domestic waste, effluents and also to climate change because of warming seawater and less circulation in the lagoon. It's also affecting the tourism industry because a lot of the beaches are polluted with this seaweed and of course it's not very attractive for tourists. Operators have been spending a lot of effort and money hauling this seaweed away by barge and just throwing it out to sea or burying it which is very labour intensive and not really sustainable, so we came up with this solution for them to use this as a source of biomass for making biofuel or making fertiliser. There are already techniques available, quite simple ones, where you could convert this biomass into either biomethane which is using a process of anaerobic digestion with bacteria which are found everywhere, and also you can produce fertiliser. The bi-product of the biomethane process is a very good fertiliser for plants and also you can just use the seaweed straight as compost after washing and some very simple processing. So those are the two solutions we are proposing communities use at the moment to deal with this issue.

SALLY ROUND: How far away are you in having something that is actually workable at a community level?

AN: We are having a one day workshop to actually teach communities how to make use of this seaweed and use it on their crops for food security and reducing the imports of chemical fertilisers because on the one hand it's very expensive to import those fertilisers and it's also very bad for the environment; the phosphates leach out into the ocean and further exacerbate this problem of seaweed blooms.

SR: And you're also looking at using it as a fuel?

AN: Both processes are more or less tied together because you can produce, the biomethane through anaerobic digestion - biogas, so we are trying to come up with a solution that's affordable for communities and that's simple for them to use and they can basically divert all their waste including this seaweed into the digestors and use the output for cooking and  lighting.

SR: So you can see a day when a family can have one of these digestors which are worth, what US$200 each, and operating their own power that way?

AN: Well it's already taking place in places like Tuvalu and in China there's a lot of biogas. Most rural families in China have biogas. It's a big industry there and we're hoping to now implement this in Fiji.

Antoine N'Yeurt says the next step could be to cultivate whole underwater forests of seaweed as a source of renewable energy.