This afternoon the GPH volunteers were privileged to be given a demonstration of how to make alternative firewood, rather than using coal or trees from the rainforest.
The basic mix is dried forest leaves, shredded paper and sawdust, mixed into a paste. The paste is pushed into a tube and tamped down into the thickness of a briquette. Using spacers, several briquettes can be made. The tube is then placed under a press to extract the water, leaving a dryish chunk that looks and feels like a Weetabix biscuit. The press is made of a very hard wood, and the pressure is applied manually, needing two people to make it work optimally. These biscuits are lit very easily and burn slowly, giving off very little smoke. Three small biscuits will be enough to cook a single meal for a large family. They are the ultimate effective recycling of waste products such as newspapers and office waste paper, and sawdust from the local mills. Leaves are collected from the abundance on the forest floor. The impact a wide distribution of these machines would make to local villages in this area, and others in Kenya, where charcoal burning worsens deforestation is immeasurable.
Currently there is only this one such machine thought to be in Kenya. The original design was produced by an American engineer a few years ago, and he made up some machines in Uganda where they are gaining popularity. Some of the KEEP staff visiting Uganda saw the machine in action and with the best principles of “technology transfer” in mind, brought measurements and drawings back to Kenya, to Kakamega. The cost of producing this one machine was KSh 50,000 which equates to about £450. The machine was made in 2007 and no others have since been made because there are no funds available. The costs of producing more machines will fall as more are ordered, but present lack of funds halts current expansion plans. The next planned step is to make three more, so that each KEEP office around the Kakamega forest can have one to use for small scale manufacture and education. No time frame exists because the funds don’t yet exist.
