Billions of people cook their food over coal, wood, charcoal, crop residue, or dung fires. Cooking in this way, especially when done indoors creates air quality problems and causes health issues for those doing the cooking; leading to millions of premature deaths annually.
Burning these types of fuels inefficiently creates more air pollution (soot, carbon monoxide, PAHs, etc) and greater carbon dioxide emissions than burning the same fuels using more efficient technology or using different fuels entirely; which is why Clean Cookstoves are the #21 solution in “Drawdown”(a NYT Bestselling book I helped research and have been writing about here). Switching to different fuels or burning the same fuels more efficiently can decrease pressure on nearby forests, which also has benefits in terms of local air quality and carbon sequestration.
Photo from Urchin Movement article on cook stoves
To keep things interesting and to motivate myself to research more climate solutions, I will be donating money to one organization working on each solution I cover here. In addition to what I donate initially, I will later send half of what the post earns here to that organization. For Clean Cookstoves, I sent $25 to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves which helps research better stove technologies and designs and distribute stoves to people who need them.
Simply by upvoting or resteeming this post you can help improve indoor air quality for billions of people and reduce carbon emissions from cooking.
To learn more about clean cookstoves visit:
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Drawdown Clean Cookstoves Solution Page
This has been another installment in my Achieving Drawdown series on climate solutions.
Other Achieving Drawdown Posts:
#4 - Feeding Cows Seaweed Can Decrease Methane Emissions Dramatically
#3 - Wind Turbines
#2 - Demand-side Response for Electric Grids
#1 - Bamboo
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