Fuel efficient stoves

Traditional style of cooking

Approximately 3 billion people (1/2 the planet) are reliant on cooking their food over open fires. The problems associated with this have been well documented in the past and include pollution from soot which leads to respiratory problems; the release of carbon into the atmosphere adding to the problem of global warming; as well as deforestation and the environmental impact that represents.

An article in The Daily Telegraph (7.5.11) tells us that many development agencies have for a long time being urging open fire users to use cleaner stoves and have offered designs to assist them. A brilliant design that has recently been winning awards is the Biolite stove which amazingly also generates electricity. It sells, The Daily Telegraph tells us, for $20. I am not sure if that is $20 in the US or $20 in the small town markets in rural Africa. It does not say.

According to The World Bank in 2005 there were 1.4 Billion people living on less than $1.25 a day, this is the recognised International Extreme Poverty Line. Families living here do not have a disposable income that allows them to spend $20 to buy a stove. So who is going to buy these amazing stoves?

I commend the brilliance of the invention but I worry that the solution is the result of a science project and as such fails to recognise some of the most important problems surrounding the people at whom it is aimed.

In Tanzania approximately 80% of the 42 million inhabitants live in rural areas and 75% are subsistence farmers. They are all dependant on firewood to cook their meals and are perhaps oblivious to the long term damage to themselves, the environment. They have no gas, no electricity and no money, and even if they were aware of the harm it was doing, what other options are there for them?

Well there are other options…….

The Livingstone Tanzania Trust and other small grass roots charities understand that poverty is a complex web of inter related problems and understand that the solutions need to be just as inter related and address as many of the problem rather than just one.

The Livingstone Tanzania Trust started by supporting local women’s groups improve their knowledge and skills by assisting them with their fuel efficient stove project. These stoves are made from locally available materials and distributed within the wider community. The profits from their business was used by the women to boost their household income and enable them to achieve their own goals.   The stoves were 60-75% efficient, which might not be as efficient as Biolite, but were sufficient enough to slow down deforestation and allow the community to plant trees at a rate closer to that of their demand. Another project we are helping them with.  The households buying wood for the stove were also making savings because of reduction in firewood they had to purchase or gather. It was a win-win scenario.

The story does not end there, we continued to support the women seeking out how improvements could be made to their business. When we heard about Sunseed Tanzania, through Together4Africa we got in contact with them and organised for the leaders of the women’s group to go to Dodoma and receive additional training.  They came back with new skills and renewed motivation and set about building the above Rocket stove. This design works on the same idea as their existing model but uses a different design with reduced the cost and so is more attractive to use. This revised model is being built and sold in the community and has proved far more marketable.

We have continued working with the women and sought their assistance when we wanted to build an industrial stove in a primary school using their design. After much consultation we jointly set about redesigning it so that it has two fire chambers feeding 3 hobs with a central chimney. The blue metal rings protect the hobs which will be knocked about ans so provide the much needed extra durability. The metal doors with air vents and a fixed grate for the wood enables the air to circulate whilst keeping the stoke away from the cook.

The difference between what we have achieved and what Biolit have achieved is that we have created a stove which not only reduces the demand for firewood and so be default the impact on the local and global environment; reduces the health hazards for the user, made it affordable for the user and created a small business for the local community so their money is kept within their local economy.