4.1. Location: Sechuan/southwestern China

In China, biogas plants are built under the pigsty. The kitchen is in the direct vicinity of the plant. The toilets are always connected to the plant, meaning that the plant also serves as a septic tank. The liquid slurry is scooped off every day. This method, involving a great amount of work, is only possible because human excrement has been used traditionally as a fertiliser without taboos for hundreds of years. Buckets of liquid manure are carried on a yoke, something which would be impossible in predominantly Islamic countries. In this region the biogas plants are promoted by the state and the province by means of mass campaigns and dissemination programmes and have thus become part of normal agricultural technology. The purpose of promotion was mainly to improve the energy situation of rural households who found it difficult to meet their demand of energy due to high population density and the bad supply of firewood and fossil sources of energy. Apart from this' the "comprehensive" use of biogas plants, i.e. the efficient use of the slurry, was promoted. Since almost complete privatisation of biogas dissemination and the better supply of energy for rural households, the number of plants disseminated per year has fallen from several ten thousands to some thousands. The lower profit margins in rural areas are leading to an increasing number of qualified entrepreneurs moving to urban areas to construct wastewater plants.