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Rising to the Challenge
The Challenge
More than three billion
people, or half the world’s population, cook in their homes using traditional
fire and stoves, burning biomass fuels like wood, dung and crop waste. Day in
and day out, for hours at a time, families breathe in lethal fumes from these
cooking fires. Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) currently claims the lives of 1.5
million people a year worldwide, or one person every 20 seconds. Women and
children make up 85% of these deaths due to their increased exposure in the
home.
The Solution
To achieve the desired
health, environmental, social and economic improvements, hundreds of millions of
primitive stoves will need to be replaced. From the outset, Envirofit has
systematically set the stage for this degree of global scalability and
sustainability through: enterprise-based business model driving economic
self-sustainability, voice-of-the-customer market research, disciplined
ground-breaking R & D, modern product development process, robust durability and
emissions testing, global supply chain supporting centralized quality-controlled
mass-manufacturing, multi-tiered distribution & sales networks,
location-specific marketing strategies, partnerships with global organizations
and local microfinance institutions (MFIs) & non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), and global awareness raising and brand building about
Envirofit and the problems we look to address.
In creating products for developing world customers, Envirofit utilizes the same
disciplined, mature product-development methodologies used by modern industry.
Compared to traditional cooking fires, Envirofit cookstoves reduce emissions by
as much as 80%, use up to 60% less fuel and reduce cooking cycle time by up to
50%. Built and engineered to address the unique cooking habits of our customers,
Envirofit clean cookstoves are a result of over five years of market research,
engineering R & D, emissions and durability testing in coordination with Shell
Foundation and Colorado State University’s world-renown Engines and Energy
Conversion Laboratory. Envirofit International’s goal is to develop affordable,
aesthetic, well-engineered technology solutions that have significant global
health and environmental impacts and economic payback incentives for our
customers
The Issue - Indoor Air Pollution (IAP)
According to the World
Health Organization, nearly 3 billion people – or almost half the world’s
population – cook their daily meals indoors over biomass-fueled cooking fires.
Traditional cooking methods cannot achieve clean combustion so the majority of
the heat is wasted and up to 20 percent of the biomass is converted into toxic
substances like carbon monoxide, particulates, benzene and formaldehyde. The
resulting Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) kills 1.6 million people every year. Due to
their increased exposure in the home, over 85 percent of these deaths are women
and children under the age of five. IAP-generated illness and deaths strain
already poverty-stricken families on the edge, reducing income generation
capacity and adding expenses for health care and medication. But this is not
just a health issue.
Cutting down trees for
fuel leads to deforestation, desertification and has long been linked to
increased greenhouse gas emissions. However, emerging research is highlighting
black carbon (or soot) from cooking fires in developing countries one of the top
contributors to global warming. Second only to carbon dioxide (40%), black
carbon accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Replacing
traditional cooking fires in developing countries with clean cookstoves is seen
as a “quick-fix” that provides developing world nations time to get a handle on
CO2. Since black carbon only stays in the atmosphere for a few weeks (unlike
carbon dioxide which lingers for years), replacing traditional cookstoves with
clean-burning versions would have a dramatically impact, removing its warming
effects almost immediately. But this is not just an environmental issue.
In many developing world
countries deforestation has made biomass fuel scarce. Women and children can
spend up to 4 hours each day collecting fuel for cooking. At worst, in war zones
and outside refugee camps, women and girls are targets for assault as they
venture far beyond the safety of their villages. At best, it is a physically
exhausting trip and time spent away from the home, from educational study, from
play or income-generating efforts to improve the family’s position.
Alternatively, families may decide to purchase their biomass fuel. Families
spend between 7-15% of their annual household income exclusively on energy
costs. By reducing the quantity of biomass fuel needed, families have increased
time, money, and choices about how to improve their family life.
“The cross-cutting
nature of this solution with health, environmental, social and economic benefits
provides a very big bang for your buck. Now it’s in everybody’s self-interest to
deal with things like cookstoves — not just because hundreds of thousands of
women and children far away are dying prematurely.” -- Erika Rosenthal, a senior
lawyer at Earth Justice. NY Times,
“Third World Soot is Target in Climate Fight”
4/16/09
Technology
Envirofit technology is built on disciplined design protocols - R & D,
industrial design, durability & emissions validation (internal and
external/independent), high volume centralized manufacturing, global supply
chain management - supported by scalable distribution channels.
Envirofit’s newest
technologies bring major breakthroughs in combustion chamber and product
development, yielding a unique, integrated solution to addressing IAP -- the
Envirofit Clean Cookstoves System. Launching in June 2009, the Envirofit Clean
Cookstove System is an integrated approach to cooking, extending the utility of
Envirofit’s single-pot biomass cookstove (G-3300) with double-pot,
pressure-cooker, pot skirt and LPG accessories.
Also introduced with the Envirofit Clean Cookstove System is the revolutionary,
patent-pending EnviroFlame Combustion System, a new approach to combustion
chamber technology development that increases durability, reduces emissions and
reduces product weight.
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