A company in southern India has come up with a viable way for poor households to help themselves.

The locally-made biogas plant, filled with bacteria found in the stomachs of cows, silently and odorlessly converts food waste and into gas.

More than 20,000 homes in Kerala have installed the hand made plant, and the money they save pays off the machine in less than three years.

Their home cooking, they say, tastes all the better for its green credentials.

Al Jazeera's Tarek Bazley reports from Thiruvananthapuram, India, on a solution in India that's got plenty of merit when it comes to powering homes in areas of the developing world often beset by power cuts.