With its EU-funded invention of a portable ‘’ “anaerobic digester” that turns kitchen waste and livestock manure into cooking and lighting gas, an Israeli start-up is making the lives of Palestinians in rural areas of the West Bank and Bedouin in the Negev desert easier and healthier.

40 portable digester generators designed by HomeBioGas, a start-up based in the Beit Yanai moshav in central Israel, are in use in a pilot project at the Palestinian village of al-Awja in the West Bank. They supply free, clean energy by gobbling up organic waste.

Some digesters have also been provided to Bedouin in Israel in partnership with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, based in the arid Negev desert.

They can be taken along if people living in ramshackle huts or tent dwellers, such as local Bedouin, decide to relocate or move homes.

HomeBioGas has invented this simple digester that can easily be assembled and transported," said Palestinian engineer Amer Rabayah, who coordinates installation of the devices with Israelis.

According to Oshik Efrati, CEO of HomeBioGas, the digesters could save many lives in rural areas across the world where smoke from cooking on an open fire causes severe respiratory illness and death.

“Families in these areas not only live off the grid,” HomeBioGas sales manager Ron Yariv said. “But they dwell in tents or tin huts.” This, he said, forces them to burn wood from trees or goat manure to generate fire for cooking.

“This is arduous and dangerous,” he said, adding that more than four million people across the world die annually from the toxic fumes emitted during this process. “It is also very harmful to the environment.”

The portable product is 1.6 by 1 meters, as unobtrusive as the individual gas tanks commonly used in Israel, hooks up to the stove, also provided by the company, with a pipe.

The project, which was launched in conjunction with Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Peres Peace Center, is funded by the European Union to the tune of half a million euros.

Gas is produced in the “digester” through fermentation of organic waste mixed with water and certain bacteria, which then multiply. An added benefit, said Yariv, is that a liquid is created from the process that can be used as organic fertilizer for crops. The price for consumers has not yet been determined, but the device itself costs a few hundred dollars in materials and construction.