๐ Club Leaf Project: closer look at Bondhu Chula Cookstove Project
Updated: Mar 7
Cooking over an open fire contributes to nearly 50.000 premature deaths a year. It also contributes to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and to the amount of carbon emissions. Currently, less than one in five households in Bangladesh has access to clean cookstoves. Are you curious to see the benefit you bring through projects you support? Keep on reading. Weโre taking you for a closer look ๐
Wood and other biomass are used on traditional open fire stoves. With more than 41% of households in Bangladesh still relying on firewood as the main cooking fuel, intensive use of wood for cooking (estimated around 52 million tons per year) threatens forests and biodiversity loss. So what is a Bondhu Chula stove exactly and what benefits do they bring?
This is a Bondhu Chula stove:
It may not look exciting, but Bondhu Chula stove is a fuel efficient stove which requires 50% less fuel. It removes smoke and pollutants from indoors and can be fed using multiple different fuels - not only wood.
Bondhu Chula cookstoves reduce CO2 emissions
A single Bondhu Chula cookstove saves over 1.7 tons of GHG carbon dioxide. In the next five years, 6 million Bondhu Chula cookstoves will be installed under the project, which will reduce at least 22 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade.
Clean cooking is a nature-based solution, a technology-based solution, a community-based solution, and an opportunity to improve climate justice
The Bondhu Chula project also brings a multitude of different benefits and contributes to many of the SDGs. For example, the more Bondhu Chula cookstoves are used by the community, the more forest is saved from deforestation. The project also works with local micro-entrepreneurs to train them in stove production, sales, marketing and after-sales service. Carbon finance is used to subsidize 50% of the cost of stove installation, so that this solution is accessible to so many more people.
Bondhu Chula Cookstove Project delivers 3 main benefits to the local people:
Short term health benefits by keeping kitchens smoke-free and protecting the health of its users
Long term health benefit reducing the amount of women and children suffering and dying from various smoke-related diseases
Local entrepreneurs produce, sell and install Bondhu Chula cookstoves along with after sales services such as monitoring and maintenance. Hence, new employment opportunities are created and many individuals become financially independent.
So, by supporting this project you are supporting the production, distribution and installation of fuel-efficient, health, environment, and climate-friendly stoves. Great right?!
Want to know more? Check out their videos here!
Did you know..
Bondhu Chula Cookstove Project helps women to have 5.55-6.66x reduced eye irritation compared to the women who use traditional stoves! The same women have on average 0.90-1.28x lower respiratory problems relative to women who cook using traditional stoves. Overall, findings suggest that positive and significant health-improving outcomes are associated with the use of Bondhu Chula.
Want to support Bondhu Chula Cookstove Project alongside other great projects? click here ๐ And here to download Club Leaf app on your phone.