Why We Support The Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves

We support The Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves with donations from memberships to our Pitmaster Club. This remarkable a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization develops and distributes high efficiency cookstoves to the needy around the world. Many are wood burning but they require much less wood than the old fashioned stoves that also filled their huts and eyes and lungs with soot. These new designs are practically smokeless. Many use propane which is very clean. Some burn biomass such as rice husks or even dried dung and some use solar energy. Some are even manufactured locally.

 

Placeholder

Some of these clever designs have come from the recreational camping world, and many have migrated the other way, into the camping world. Below is a well insulated high efficiency unit that can burn wood, biomass such as crop byproducts like corncobs, it can run on solar, and can even store enough energy to power a light or charge a cell phone. Reducing the amount of wood means less deforestation in dry areas and women spend less time collecting wood and are at less risk. Check out the hundreds of designs being tested. 

 

Placeholder

Household smoke may be the world’s deadliest environmental hazard

This article is excerpted from The Economist.

Imagine building a small pile of wood and kindling in the smallest room in your house and setting fire to it. You can keep the door open to let out some smoke, but cannot switch on an extractor fan. You must tend the fire for an hour. Repeat the process three times a day.

This is how Fatou N’Dour lives. Her kitchen, separate from her home and built of mud bricks, measures roughly two metres by two. She usually cooks indoors because of the winds that whip across Lambayene, the village where she lives in central Senegal. Wood-collecting may take four trips a week, each one of up to four hours.

Household smoke is thought to be the world’s most lethal environmental problem, killing 2.6 million people a year. Where wood and charcoal are burned trees often disappear. Africa loses some 0.5% of its forests every year, a higher rate of destruction than South America’s. Soot from domestic fires also warms the planet, particularly when it settles on snow. Black carbon like that from dirty cookstoves is thought to be the third most important cause of climate change after carbon dioxide and methane.

Brazil, Ecuador and Indonesia, among others, have all subsidised propane (LPG). Since 2016 the Indian government has made LPG available to 34 million households, giving them gas stoves and one cylinder free. Not only is propane much cleaner than solid fuel. It also feels like a step up in the world and is easier to use (the women say that even men can cook with it).

Subsidies make for poor policy tools. They are snaffled by wealthy, well-connected people. They create lobbies supporting them, and become hard to cut. Particularly in small countries, subsidised goods are likely to leak over borders. Subsidies may also vary from year to year with the government’s budget. That is a particular danger in the case of cooking fuel, because cooks prize reliability. If people cannot always obtain clean fuel, they will probably revert to dirty stuff, says Radha Muthiah, the departing head of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

 

Placeholder

 

Published On: 04/26/2018 Last Modified: 08/31/2019

Placeholder

Meathead Goldwyn

Meathead is the founder and publisher of AmazingRibs.com, and is also known as the site's Hedonism Evangelist and BBQ Whisperer. He is also the author of "Meathead, The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling", a New York Times Best Seller and named one of the "100 Best Cookbooks of All Time" by Southern Living.

Placeholder

Placeholder

Placeholder

Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our links and purchase from them. On Amazon it works on everything from grills to diapers, they never tell us what you bought, and it has zero impact on the price you pay, but has a major impact on our ability to improve this site! And remember, we only recommend products we love. If you like AmazingRibs.com, please save this link and use it every time you go to Amazonhttps://tinyurl.com/amazingribs

Placeholder

Placeholder

Get Smoke Signals, our free e-letter. No spam. Guaranteed

Enter your email:

If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad free experience and much more!

Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 4,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner like TV network or a magazine publisher to subsidize us. 

Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club, but please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get 21 great benefits. We block all third party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial membership, and help keep this site alive.

Post comments and questions below

Placeholder

1) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.

2) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer.

3) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different than your membership login.

Moderators

  Meathead
  Max
  Clint
  Spinaker
  Prof. Blonder
  Jerod
  Huskee
  Candy Sue
  Henrik

 

Click to ask questions and make comments
 

 

 
  FIRST PRIZE: Award of Excellence, National BBQ Association
  NOMINEE: World Food Media Awards
  MEMBER: International Association of Culinary Professionals
  LIFETIME MEMBER: Kansas City Barbeque Society
   MEMBER: Memphis Barbecue Network
   MEMBER: National Barbecue Association
   ORDER OF THE SCUPPERNONG: Southern Foodways Alliance
   FOUNDING MEMBER: Operation BBQ Relief
   REPRESENTED BY: The Lisa Ekus Group, Promoting A World Of Culinary Talent
   SUSTAINING DONOR: Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves
    Member: Society of Professional Journalists
    Finalist: IACP Digital Media Awards

We lovingly support

Placeholder