I was reading the other day about an Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plant at Castelbosco farm, Italy. The farm has built a whole museum, aptly named the ‘Museum of S**t’, which showcases the extraordinary uses, art and history of organic material, both in human history and within nature.

Castelbosco farm is a dedicated dairy for the production of Grana Padano cheese; it houses 2,500 cattle that produce 100,000 kilos of manure a day. The farmer, Gianantonio Locatelli turned processing this waste into an ecological project, and the AD plant was born. As well as providing heat for the castle and museum, the digestate is used as a fertiliser and used in the production of plaster and bricks.

As a more visual demonstration of the power of the microbes within a digester, in a quiet corner of the castle, a culture of genetically-modified bacteria is kept in a series of jars. What’s special about them is that as they convert the organic material to methane, they emit a soft green light. The bioluminescent display is designed to demonstrate the relationship between different forms of energy and the related conversion processes that are present in nature.