Photo: 16 March, 2013 - Mexico City, Mexico -- Sistema Biobolsa, Instituto Internacional de Recursos Renovables (IRRI México), Isla Urbana, and Columbia University Sustainability Managment Capstone Workshop students in front of a Sistema Biobolsa's biodigestor system.
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Sistema Biobolsa provides small-scale farmers and families with biodigesters for fertilizer and methane gas for cooking. They design, build and services the systems they sell. And they work with micro-finance experts at Kiva to make sure farmers are able to afford the system. Sistema Biobolsa s business model is driven by an education program that facilitates technology adoption.
Admittedly, Sistema Biobolsa thinks that they are not doing a good job going back to the clients and showing them how much they are saving. “Clients are crazy about biogas and biofertilizer.” Humza Arshad of Sistema Biobolsa says, “But we need to do a better job with promotional materials that have profile that shows them the money that they save.The cost converted into savings from using waste to resources in the biodigestion process vary with benefits that include: energy displacement, fertilizer displacement, time savings, health, and reduced pollution with a rapid return on investment.
Photo: Sistema Biobolsa's client based in Txalca and their cost savings for installing a Biobolsa system. (Sistema Biobolsa)
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Sistema Biobolsa need to make their technology part of everyday life for at least the estimated 1.5 million potential users within Mexico. With this goal, our graduate program's Capstone Workshop group's project has identified that Sistema Biobolsa may need a communication tool that can help normalize your biodigestor systems. We think a technology-agnostic, people-centered story tool could help generate a normalizing effect.
Our Capstone group visited Sistema Biobolsa in Mexico during our Spring Break. We held a two-day workshop with Sistema Biobolsa to learn about their entrepreneurial business model and the system’s engineering. In those two days, we were also able to build a biodigestor system (yes, we got dirty as seen in the pictures below), meet with the community that Sistema Biobolsa were working with, see how they campaign with their clients, and experience what it was like to be a “social entrepreneur.”
A video preview of how the biodigestor system that we were installing connects to the cookstove. It was exciting to see how Sistema Biobolsa were directly impacting the livelihood of low-income communities in Mexico.
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Building a Biobolsa System in Mexico
Sistema Biobolsa Director, Alex Eaton and Sustainability Management students, Melissa Boo, Floren Poliseo, Challey Commer "customizing" a Biobolsa unit.
Melissa Boo and Alex Eaton
Floren Poliseo and Challey Commer
Alex Eaton, Director of Sistema Biobolsa
Esperanza Garcia
Our client!
The cookstove that the biodigestor system is connected to
16 March, 2013 - Mexico City, Mexico -- A slideshow of our Sistema Biobolsa Workshop experience
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During my time in Mexico, I also had the opportunity to sit down with Humza Arshad, the Client Services Coordinator at Sistema Biobolsa, and asked him a few questions.
What are the main takeaways that you wanted us to learn in the SB workshop?
We want to stress the fact that the biodigestor technology exists, it is available, commercial, and we are providing this support. Our job is to continue to accelerate in our company’s sales and work with people to help provide them with the benefits. At the end of the day, our goal is getting this available technology combined with our improvements that provides community benefits to the people so that the people who can benefit from them should be buying them.
What are your expectations for our Capstone deliverable?
Anything that helps us better communicate the benefits from clients, either current or prospective clients is very helpful for them.
What are the biggest challenges for Sistema Biobolsa?
Our greatest challenge is our ability to finance. Our product requires a large capital investment. At this point, over 95% of sales involved government subsidy or financing of some sort.
Another challenge is recognition or awareness of our technology. We are accessing and generating a larger market for biodigestor systems than has never been done in Latin America. Currently, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, have these exciting top-down biodigestor projects in existence, but there are none in Mexico. We are a private company that is doing minimal support without support from the government. Within Mexico, there are millions of people that can benefit from the technology that do not know about it. When we have people who can see systems functioning, see the gas burning, see the biofertilizer from our crops, that is how we have been successful.
In addition, a challenge that we have is building local and technical capacity. Some of the members of your Capstone, have in fact met some of our technical staff. Our technical staff can generate sales where they have generating capacity. In Mexico, we have installed systems in 20 states. In 4 states of the 20 states, namely Estado de Mexico, Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Yucatán, we have installed more that 50 systems and in those 4 states. We'll be reaching 50 more in Querétaro in the next two weeks. In most of those states, there really isn’t a significant density of installation. We can’t provide the same level of maintenance and sales, because we don’t have team that are equipped in sales and maintenance.
How have you overcome your challenges?
Our obstacles are both internal and external. Internally, we have improved in our organization. Over the past year, we are more organized and much more professional which allow us to do a better job overall. Externally installing and building technical capacity over a greater area and increasing access to financing
What are Sistema Biobolsa’s strengths and advantages?
One of our strengths is making ideas happen. Alex started off with an idea, but in order to transform that into a company with 20 employees and 700++ installed biodigestors with 30,000-40,000 direct beneficiaries is a huge deal. We are willing to take risks and willing to persevere. This is a long-term process. Increasing awareness, expanding sales, expanding networks with government, clients, and NGO’s has continued to allow us to expand. We have a pretty awesome technology.
What is Sistema Biobolsa’s Goal?
Our goal is make our system functional, inexpensive, and accessible. We are happy that we have great minds, like your team, are looking at the system and how we can improve in different areas.
Source:
"Columbia University Sustainability Management Living on the Edge Capstone Midterm." Columbia University Earth Institute and School of Continuing Educatin Apr. 2013.
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