Dazin, a co-operative enterprise operating under Happy Green Cooperative in Bhutan, has come up with an innovative solution to eliminate household air pollution created from cooking fuel in Bhutan.
Globally, nearly five hundred people die every hour due to inhaling the harmful smoke that comes out of an open fire — that’s more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Despite these dangers, cooking with an open fire remains the most common method of food preparation in developing countries. Every day, around 3 billion people are exposed to the poisonous gases released from open fires, a large percentage of which are young children.
According to Dazin, the number of people cooking with open fires is one of the greatest social and environmental problems we face today. But due to the lack of affordable alternatives, those living in poverty have no option but to continue spending 25% of their income on life threatening fuel.
However, Dazin founder Deepak Ashwani believes the company has found the solution to this killer issue. Although the technology of smokeless stoves and renewable fuel already exists, it is unable to reach the masses because, “Those who need it, can’t afford it and those who can afford it, don’t need it!” To tackle this problem, the company not only created “the fuel cookie,” it also created a financing model that makes the technology available to those in need.
Here is how the financing model works: Families give their wood waste—waste that would have otherwise been burned for fuel— to Dazin, who then turns this crowdsourced wood waste into a condensed fuel ‘cookie’. In return, Dazin supplies the family with a smokeless cookstove on lease and enough fuel cookies to cover their needs. The organization then sells the surplus fuel made from crowdsourced wood waste to urban customers at a competitive price. Within as little as seven months, the cost of the stove is recovered.
“The prevailing solution is to distribute improved cookstoves,” says Ashwani. “But how can you sell and maintain stoves to people earning less than $2 (£1.31) a day? Household energy expenditures are not only constrained by the cost of the cookstoves themselves but also the cost and time taken to obtain the fuel required to burn. Over time, all of these fuels can be far more expensive or time consuming than the stove itself.”
According to Ashwani, Dazin’s fuel ‘cookies’ and financial model tackles these issues. “Dazin saves lives, reduces carbon emissions and gives people a way out of poverty,” the organization states. To aid in their cause and help save millions of lives, you can make donations via their website or promote Dazin via your social media.
This Article (Organization’s Fuel Cookie Programme Could Save Lives By Eliminating Household Air Pollution) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
