Pilgrim's Agriculture and Environment Programs reports progress in several projects involving environmentally friendly cooking stoves, and their adoption on a community level. First, Beacon of Hope School now has new stoves, and they are a major improvement! Until last semester, all cooking was done in huge pots balanced on rocks encircling a wood fire. Can you imagine cooking a large pot of boiling porridge this way? (See before and after photos below) The food in the pots is a cornmeal mush called posho that is a staple of the Ugandan diet. The installation of four institutional-size energy efficient cooking stoves is complete, and they are now in use and cookin' away. The stoves use considerably less fuel - 3 tons of wood during the last 3-month term instead of the usual 12 tons! That lowered amount of wood for fuel makes a huge difference, over even a short time, in the deforestation that is taking place in Uganda. Besides saving money, less time is spent in finding, purchasing and handling firewood. Another very significant change these stoves bring is a health benefit, as they reduce the risk of upper respiratory infections for the kitchen workers. No longer do they breathe in the wood smoke from the open fires. The new stoves have provided a good on-site demonstration for the students of an environmentally responsible and sustainable change that brings improvement in multiple areas.
These new kind of cookstoves can improve the way the average rural Ugandan cooks. Pilgrim will be distributing 20,000 very efficient cookstoves, called rocket stoves, to the members of the farmer cooperatives we work with and their surrounding communities. Pilgrim will also provide trainings in the advantages and use of these carbon zero stoves.
The Agriculture and Environment Department already conducted a pilot training in the construction and utilization of a variant of these efficient cook stoves, also called Lorenna stoves, in partnership with the Center for Research in Energy and Environmental Conservation (CREEC) affiliated with Makarere University. As these stoves are constructed of locally available materials, each and every household that gets a stove will not just know how to use it but also how to construct it once the life-span of the first set is over. These stoves have 1-pot or 2- pot capabilities, with removable loose fitting pots which sit in the round cavities accessible from the top surface. The thermal insulated walls are made of locally available inexpensive mud mixed with sawdust, pumice or any available agricultural waste. This insulation focuses most of the heat onto the bottom of the removable loose fitting pan that sits in the round cavity. The stoves are so efficient because the insulation focuses the heat from the wood fire to the bottom pan, and because so little of the heat is lost through the thick walls of the stove. Although most cooking in the region will still be done with wood, it can be done with greatly improved efficiency. Carbon dioxide emissions and smoke will considerably be reduced, and each individual's/household carbon foot print, and contribution to environmental degradation will be reduced.
Non-photo illustrations below from Ugandan Gov't publicationhttp://www.energyandminerals.go.ug/pdf/gtz/brochure_ee_rsdom.pdf
Related Links: Beacon Of Hope Secondary School
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