Waste products of any kind are seen as a problem that needs to be solved. Good Return’s Sustainable Energy Program has a big emphasis on what happens after: after the useful life is over, after the battery runs out, after the family gets connected to electricity. Not so with biogas. Biogas is all about taking a waste product and turning it into something useful....

We leave the small city of Sintang and it is green everywhere. Here in Borneo, we are working in tropical rainforests which a man from the WWF tells me contains 40-50% of the world’s flora and fauna. People tell me of monkeys and orang-utans in their backyard. We transport turtles in our pickup, while constantly swerving to avoid snakes, as well as dogs, pig,...

We’ve heard it all before. The developing world, they are so poor. They live in the dark. They have no other options. But is this really true? (Great article about the tag #firstworldproblems.) I’ve been travelling across some of the poorest countries in the  Asia-Pacific with Good Return and everywhere I go I see people with poor-quality light. People using...

Like 60% of Kalimantan, the village of Ansok is not connected to subsidised government electricity. Those that can afford it have a personal generator. And in fuel costs alone, they pay around 25 times as much as they would if the network reached them – for only 3-4 hours of light every night. For the rest, there is the “pilitah,” or kerosene lantern. The...

To date sales of our solar lamp in the Philippines have been slow. Part of the reason for this was that our Filipino local solar agents were trialling our product– to see how it would work in their homes. And part of the reason was that our agents were waiting for the harvest season – “that’s when our clients have money!”, the agents said. But with the...

The line between good intentions and good itself is often quite difficult to draw. And unfortunately even the most laudable actions can sometimes have problematic conclusions. Since its development in the 40’s, the aid and development sector has been seen as a panacea to help developing countries lift themselves out of their situation. However, due to its potential...