JOIN USSmokeless chulhas are increasingly becoming a part of homes where LPG doesn’t reach, writes Joyatri Ray.
Mangalamma (name changed) lives with her family in Kanyanpura village near Bandipur National Park. For many years she has been cooking on an open firewood stove – a contraption consisting of three stones on which a single vessel is kept. The stove emits a lot of smoke, turning the walls of her kitchen black and causing unmeasured harm to her health.
The stove consumes up to 20 kg of firewood a day, which means she has to make a hazardous trip into the forest to collect firewood almost five times a week. She works as a daily wage earner at a nearby farm, and at the end of a tiring day’s work cooking the family dinner takes her almost 90 minutes, leaving little time to rest.
Mangalamma’s life changed last year when an NGO, Junglescapes Charitable Trust, installed a low-smoke chulha in her home. Now she no longer has to contend with the smoke in her kitchen. The new chulha uses almost 60 percent less firewood, which means she has to collect firewood only twice a week. The two burners on the chulha means she cooks in less than an hour, giving her valuable time to rest and take care of her kids.
Emission from firewood cooking constitutes the third largest contributor to green-house gases after industrial and transport emissions. With increasing population pressures, this also poses a serious threat to vast stretches of forests and green cover in our country.
In fact, this is listed as one of the key threats to the Western Ghats eco-system. While the Government has been making efforts to provide cooking gas to people in many such areas, LPG still remains out of reach of many families that live below the poverty line.
As a CSR project of ING Vysya Foundation, it gives them an opportunity to address three inter-connected pillars of health, environment, and women’s empowerment. It also gives their employees a volunteering opportunity to visit villages and install the chulhas. In the bargain, they gain valuable perspectives about social and ecological aspects that are quite new to them. It is quite interesting that the chulha has been able to meet the ecological objectives of Junglescapes. Another 200 chulhas are planned to be installed in the current calendar year.
Employment opportunity
The key advantage of this chulha is that it can be entirely fabricated using locally available raw materials and skills. Through this reputed programme, two village youths are now successful eco-preneurs who fabricate and install the chulhas locally in the region. They use a mould provided to them to concrete cast the chulhas which then go through a curing and finishing process. The chulha consists of a unique CKD design of 8 inter-locking pieces that enables easy transportation and installation.
In fact, installation of the chulha takes less than an hour. This CKD design also means the chulha can be easily shifted from one place to another when people renovate or change their homes. Efficient thermodynamics enables optimum combustion and minimal loss of heat energy, which automatically means reduced firewood, faster cooking and lesser smoke. A chimney pipe carries the remaining exhaust out of the house, ensuring that the kitchen has almost no smoke.
Ramesh Venkataraman, Trustee of Junglescapes, says “When we started our restoration initiatives, one of the first challenges was the pressure on the forests for firewood. Several young trees were being impacted every year due to lopping of branches that left them stunted.
Our search for a viable alternative brought us to this low-smoke chulha that had been designed by Philips as part of their CSR programme called ‘Philanthropy by Design.’ Prototypes developed were put through intensive field tests leading to two final models – Saral and Sampoorna prior to rolling out as a viable option towards environment friendly cooking solutions for the rural community.
According to a community programme conducted in the Bandipur Tiger reserve, that covered 16 villages constituting 400 families, setting up an eco-stove helped the tribal community several ways (see box).
Over last two years Junglescapes has held training workshops for a number of NGOs on the fabrication and installation of the chulha. The potential is huge, as there are a number of villages as close as 30 kms from Bangalore that still use firewood for cooking. The simple chulha that costs less than Rs 1300 can play a key role in combating global warming, protecting tree cover and empowering rural women.
Feedback from the chulha users has been very positive and encouraging. Says Ramesh “What we also realised is that the chulha helps them retain their traditional cooking practices and cuisine. Maybe this explains their reluctance towards gas stoves, as these traditions could disappear rapidly with the migration to LPG as has happened in urban areas.”
“With the tribal community gaining a livelihood and a healthier living, setting up an eco-stove allows reduced deforestation, reduced CO2 emissions and greenhouse gasses, reduced wood consumption. Moreover, the chulha has also enabled us build strong rapport with the villagers.”
This initiative is a unique example of the change that could be brought in by a meaningful partnership of CSR practitioners, NGOs, community and social innovators.