A Town Fire Eating the Wind: Memories of the Ogawa-machi Biogas Caravan (2003)

A Town Fire Eating the Wind: Memories of the Ogawa-machi Biogas Caravan (2003)

In 2003, Ogawa-machi, Saitama Prefecture, was quietly heating up under the banner of Japan's shift to a recycling-oriented society. The "Biogas Caravan," initiated by a citizens' group, was an experimental challenge to produce methane gas from livestock manure and replace propane for household use. Without expensive machinery or subsidies, light trucks carrying handmade fermentation equipment traveled around the country. This traveling device was not a technology, but a device that conveyed a thought, a flame that carried environmental questions from town to town. This movement, born of the soil of organic agriculture, was a return to an energy that "we create" rather than "someone else does it for us. Without relying on institutions or industry, we can generate heat from within our daily lives--this everyday poetry may be the original landscape in the name of ecology.