Fueling Change

Category: Alternative energy | Date: Jul 10 2008 | By: endingcharcoal

Recent donations
Wow! A huge thank you to Natalia R. in California who gave us a $500.00 donation this month. Natalia did her thesis on Grauer’s gorillas and has been a steadfast supporter of the mountain gorillas as well. Judy B, thank you, too, for your generous donation. People like you make it all possible!

The latest news
Ultimately, we began exploring biomass briquettes as a way of saving mountain gorillas and the forests of Virunga, NP, but it’s becoming quite clear that we are going to be helping humans, too. It looks to be a win-win for everyone. The animals and forests will benefit from the reduction in deforestation and habitat destruction and people will benefit having access to a sustainable fuel that costs less. The current charcoal producers also stand to benefit through the creation of a new fuel market — one that is legal and not a dead-end. This week, we took one step closer to realizing our goal as Virginia Echavarria headed up to Rumangabo to start up a briquette operation at park headquarters with Ephrem Balole and ICCN Ranger Balemba.

Virginia arrived in Rumangabo on Tuesday with Francky Balole (no relation to Ephrem). Francky is one of the final candidates for the Briquette Assistant position that we posted in Bukavu and Goma in late June. With Belemba’s help, Ephrem hired 12 people from the displaced peoples’ camp. They will make up our initial press teams.

Francky takes a stove and briquettes home for a test during his training in Bukavu

Virginia and Francky headed up on Tuesday with material, and in classic Virginia-style, jumped right in. The first task was getting a feel for the area and seeing what exists up there in terms of available biomass. The answer: lots of leaves, which means lots of composting. We hope to augment this with waste products such as paper and sawdust, which reduce our labor requirements. They also got a feel for the facilities, such as where we will make the briquettes, store the materials and presses, as well the accommodations for our soon-to-be-named assistant. The next day, they gathered the workers and did a presentation on briquetting.

Newly hired press workers being briefed on the training schedule

Virginia’s presentation drew a far bigger crowd than expected. Look at her go!

Material preparation: Workers shredding and soaking waste paper from a Goma printer

My son Ty, inspired by all the paper shredding in Rumangabo, gets down to work himself

A team of new press workers and a new press getting to know each other

A worker laying out briquettes to dry

Franky leading a discussion about the pressing operation

Today, Virginia and Franky lead a competition amongst the teams to get an idea of how they were taking to the technology and how much they could produce. They were happily surprised to find that with a few days of training, the teams were producing 125 briquettes per hour. To put that in perspective, that’s enough briquettes made in one hour to supply cooking fuel to approximately 10 families of 8 people for a day — and for 35-40% less money. Virginia sent the workers home with stoves and free briquettes at the end of the day, so they could experience first-hand what it’s like to cook with the fuel they made. News about that and more coming soon…

As always, thanks go to the Legacy Foundation for their continued guidance!

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