Just outside the boundaries of the Gombe Park, burned out hillsides with palm oil trees and dust stand out along the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Mwamgongo, Tanzania. The reason for such extensive deforestation is simple – the wood is being chopped away for cooking. Traditional three-stone stoves are only 7-10% efficient and thus require a lot more wood. And this is leading to deforestation and adding to the carbon emission.
As an alternative, a student-led group from Dartmouth University, known as Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP), are trying to introduce a greener, cleaner and cheaper stove called “Rocket Stove”. This stove can be made of clay and mud, costs less than $2 to make and is 20-25% thermally efficient with an almost smokeless fire. The stove has a short combustion chamber that concentrates gases coming from burnt wood and these gases are burnt off to produce more heat, thus making more use of the energy coming from burning wood.
This project is running on its second year, and is facing some resistance from the locals in the implementation stage since the locals still prefer the traditional three-stone stove over this new stove. Perhaps it is time for some education as well?
See the original Scientific American article here.
A good initiative from Dartmouth, but as the author of the original article said: “the three-stone stove handed [them] a pretty severe beating for the first year of the project.”
Tradition versus Modernity; Science versus Instinct. What are you going to say?
When people have bare wood around them, a lot of stones, and some basic food to heat up, you best be sure they will find a pot and do what they have to do. No matter what the science says, if this is how they are used to cooking, that’s how they will cook.
A good question to be asking though… considering development…