Food Waste into Cooking Gas

Globally, 2.3 billion people live without access to clean cooking gas and rely on rudimentary cooking methods. The lack of gas line infrastructure has forced communities to resort to firewood, propane tanks, and charcoal. For low-income households, wood and propane cost a third of their income, with an average cost of $1,400 per year for either wood or propane. In many low-infrastructure areas, wood requires individuals to travel long distances and spend 10 hours per week to collect. Nearly 300 million women are forced to shoulder the burden of collecting firewood to cook, limiting them from engaging in educational and career opportunities. All these options emit harmful fumes, causing 3.2 million deaths annually. Billions are suffering from a lack of options to be able to perform the simple act of cooking a meal.

This problem exists here in the U.S., with 11 million households suffering without access to gas lines, a majority of them living in rural and indigenous communities. Our team connected with Dr. Shayla Yellowhair of the Navajo Nation and Jair Peltier of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. They shared that most reservations in the U.S. need access to gas lines. Depending on propane tanks, Dr. Yellowhair shares that she and the rest of her community can barely afford the $150 monthly costs to fuel their tanks. According to Peltier, New housing is not being built in Turtle Mountain because tribal members are forced to leave their reservations. Jair elaborated that out of 35,000 of their members, only 8,000 live on their reservation because a majority had no choice but to leave due to a lack of infrastructure access. 

In rural and indigenous parts of America, no matter which part of the country we explored, the same issue persists: communities are forced to live without gasoline infrastructure, making cooking a meal inaccessible.

Our solution is a kitchen device that converts food waste into methane gas that can be used to power stove burners. The dimensions of the device is 11 in length x 8 in width x 24 in height. Our solution is built around the process of anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic digestion is a process where anaerobic microorganisms decompose organic waste to produce methane gas, which can be used as an energy source. Typically, anaerobic digestion can take as fast as one week and six months to produce gas. We are developing a bio-mix that speeds up the gas production time in the reaction. We have been able to produce gas in under three days. The fastest we have been able to produce gas is 6 hours. 

To use our device, users input the food waste and our proprietary bio-mix into the device and gas forms. The gas is passed through an active carbon filter to remove impurities, which is then fed to a stover burner for use. 

We have developed 28 working prototypes and have previously won 2 other pitch competitions at the University of Southern California.  

We are targeting all indigenous reservations without access to gas lines but will focus our initial pilot on the Navajo Nation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. We have conducted over 100 user interviews with Navajo, Turtle Mountain, and other indigenous communities to understand their needs. As we have iterated our prototype, we have continuously interviewed members in these two communities to update them on our progress and get their feedback. Dr. Yellowhair of the Navajo and Mr. Peltier of Turtle Mountain are working with us to launch user tests within their communities. In addition to the Navajo and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, we are forming relationships with the Yurok Tribe in Northern California, the Laguna Tribe in New Mexico, and the Sioux in South Dakota. We are also engaging with the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency to understand the stove change-out programs operating in reservations. Stove change-out programs are tribal or state-operated programs that provide funds for indigenous households to receive newer firewood stoves. However, even new firewood stoves produce harmful fumes and require users to shoulder the high cost of wood.

I grew up in New Mexico and deeply connected with several indigenous communities, including the Navajo. My connections with the native population in New Mexico are not just in a professional capacity. Many indigenous individuals I know in my home state were friends and neighbors I went to school with and grew up alongside. The tribal communities in New Mexico hold a very special place in my life because they were the first friends I made when my family immigrated to the U.S. My contact in the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa was a teaching assistant for a class I took in my freshman year of college. I had Jair as my TA in two classes, and we formed a strong friendship. We have kept in touch even after he graduated from his PhD program. I have been working with him for the past several months to understand the climate conditions in his community and test how those variables would impact our prototype. The iterations of our prototype have been through heavy collaboration and input from my professional and personal contacts within the indigenous communities we are partnering alongside. While I may not be a member of these indigenous communities, I have been their ally all my life. These are friends and neighbors that I work, play, and grow alongside. 

We have built 28 prototypes so far and are in the first iteration of our proprietary bio-mix. All 28 of our prototypes have produced gas, and we are currently iterating on the gas filtration part of our device. To ensure that the biogas we produce burns as efficiently as possible, we are creating a filter to remove other gases that dilute the efficiency of the methane. The purer the methane, the longer the gas can burn. For our bio-mix, we are working on a formula that consistently speeds up the process to produce gas overnight. We have conducted 115 user interviews, and after finalizing our filtration system and bio-mix, we will test the user with all the people we interviewed.

We're applying to solve because the program offerings encompasses all the resources and opportunities we are looking for to grow our venture. The $10,000 given to accepted teams will give us the financial support to continue iterating our bio-mix and prototype. We will use the funds to support our lab tests for our bio-mix and purchase materials for the next iteration of our prototype. As we finalize our bio-mix we will need guidance on how to undergo the process of protecting our intellectual property and file a utility patent on our device. AS first time social entrepreneurs, we have made decisions based off the insight of other social entrepreneurs. Being apart of the Solve network will enable us to expand our network and learn from the insights of our peers. Our team has yet to determine how we will monitor and measure our impact and we are looking for guidance on how to properly establish and measure impact based metrics. Ultimately we're innovators that prioritizes impact who want to be in a like-minded community that can grow alongside us.   

I am connected to the Navajo and Turtle Mountain through deep friendships and professional relationships with serval of the community members. I grew up in New Mexico, going to school and being friends with members of the Navajo. Many in the Navajo are second family to me and they were among the first communities that welcomed my family when we immigrated to America. Originally working in community organizing, I have stood by the Navajo advocating for investment into their community and expanded access to essential services. What I am working on is more than just a project or venture, I am developing a way to give back and empower the communities that have shaped the person that I am today.

Our solution enables users to utilize food waste they would've otherwise thrown out as fuel sources to meet their cooking needs. Propane tanks need to be refueled, and the expenses are inaccessible to many indigenous communities. Firewood, in addition to high costs, produces smoke that makes use indoors hazardous to a person's health. Our solution gives users an affordable device to turn their food waste into cooking, enabling them to cook sufficiently regardless of access to infrastructure. Indigenous communities within this space can reduce their waste output while gaining access to an essential need: improving their quality of life. By solving the inability to cook safely and affordably, we would allow members of communities like Jair's to return and live on their reservation without worrying that a lack of lines would limit their ability to cook. If community members can live with an improved and consistent quality of life, we will provide them with the first step to growing their reservation population and local economy.

The goal of our team is to improve the quality of life for indigenous communities and reduce the financial strain experienced by a lack of access to clean cooking gas. We continuously research to identify indigenous communities that struggle with gas line access. The goal of identifying these indigenous communities is to conduct outreach and build relationships with them. These relationships will give us more collaborators to give feedback on our product and access to more people to interview to gain insights. At a minimum, we conduct ten user interviews per week. User interviews will help us understand the daily lives of our users and the pain points they experience from a lack of gas line access. Understanding their pain points will give us perspective on best developing and implementing our solution to fit their needs. Insights from interviews and user discussions will give us direction on how to iterate our prototype, and we are planning on updating our prototype at least two times a week. Updating and iterating our prototype will eventually produce a fully developed device that enables millions of indigenous households to easily and sufficiently cook a meal.

• Target: By the end of 2025, our solution would have piloted and be present in 5,000 households in the Navajo and Turtle Mountain communities.
  • Result: demonstrate our solution functioning in a portion of the community, gain insights from the pilot, and establish credibility to leverage for larger partnerships.
• Target: by 2030, our solution will exist in all 49,907 households in the Navajo Nation and Turtle Mountain
  • Result: Turtle mountain is able to expand housing without being limited by a lack of access to gas lines and cooking gas.
  • Result: Members of the Navajo will no longer have a $150 monthly occurring expense reducing the financial strain of propane.
• Target: By 2030, our solution will exist in all tribal and rural regions in the U.S.
  • Result: reduce the financial strain imposed by rudimentary cooking methods on reservations.
  • Result: reduce the exposure to harmful fumes from rudimentary cooking methods on reservations.

The core technology that powers our solution is anaerobic digestion, which is the process where bacteria decomposes organic waste to produce methane gas for energy. We will be speeding up the gas production process with a proprietary bio-mix that leverages bacteriology and chemistry to develop. The features that regulate temperature and oxygen exposure in the device will be low tech solutions that we develop to ensure that this device works regardless of access to infrastructure.

Los Angeles, CA

• New Mexico
• North Dakota
• South Dakota

1. Jacqueline Franco, full-time
2. Noy Chatoyan, full-time
3. Anette Sandoval,full-time

We have been working on our solution for three months.

Our team leads with diversity. I am a queer, immigrant of color and Jacqueline is a latina-American woman. When recruiting our team members we were looking for individuals with skillset who also was from a minority background. Anette is a queer, latina woman with extensive experience as an environmental engineer and anaerobic digestion researcher. Noy is an Armenian American male. The four of us form our leadership team, 50% of us are femaile, 50% of us are queer, and 100% of us are people of color. When developing our solution are team has used perspectives from our backgrounds. Our solution is a need in El Salvador where Jackie is from, Vietnam where I am from, Mexico where Anette is from, and Armenia where Noy is from. The diversity on our team has given us insight into the struggles people face in low infrastructure areas. We have used our insights from our backgrounds to augment the impact we have in the indigenous communities that we serve.

We’re partnering with NGOs and government agencies, addressing their mission of reducing indoor-air pollution and providing affordable and cleaner energy solutions. Additionally, we’ve identified a state and tribal stove change out programs funded by a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency that earmarks funding to purchase cleaner alternative cooking solutions. Leveraging these programs and the distribution networks of tribal leaders, we plan to sell the units in bulk. This establishes a strong foundation for our business meeting a critical need when it matters most. This positions BioFlare to maximize impact and scalability while ensuring sustainable growth.

We're selling our solution for $120 each and will be distributing to tribal agencies, NGOs, and government agencies. After our initial pilot of $5,000 units sold through tribal agencies with stove change out programs earmarked for cooking solutions we will expand to direct to consumer sales through our website. We will additionally be selling replacement filters for our gas filtration system and bio-mixes should users need to jumpstart the reaction again. Sales of our filter and bio-mix will be the reoccurring means that we can continuing bringing in revenue.