Our new clean cooking project in Rwanda has been underway for a while and has prevented a lot of CO2 emissions. The Carbon Credits are now available in our calculator. But how does this project work exactly? Travel with us to Rwanda and discover it!
Clean cooking with pellets
Central to this project are so-called pellets, which you might recognize from traditional pellet stoves in the Netherlands. In Rwanda, many households use them for daily cooking. The pellets are locally produced from waste wood sourced from furniture sawmills. The small factory where this takes place is barely noticeable but plays a crucial role. Both women and men work here, creating as many as 70 jobs in total.
Pellet and stove shop
The pellets are transported from the factory to the store of our local partner, Biomassters, in Kigali. From there, both the pellets and the pellet stoves are distributed. Households can either purchase the pellets in the store or choose to have them delivered to their homes via the delivery service, which now also uses electric motorcycles. Additionally, there is a cashback program: when purchasing a certain amount of pellets, households receive a portion of their money back.
Smoke-free cooking
The pellet stoves are used daily to prepare meals and have a cooking time of about 50 minutes, depending on the amount of pellets used. Households use the stoves for a variety of dishes, from vegetable dishes to rice.
In addition to being a sustainable replacement for charcoal and gas, the pellets are completely smoke-free. This ensures that women, who are often responsible for cooking, as well as other family members, can live healthier indoors. Some households have a freestanding, red-colored pellet stove, while others have a built-in version that contributes to a true kitchen feel.
“I like to use the pellet stove to cook everything we need in this house, whether it’s difficult or easy to cook. The stove can handle it all.”
UC Berkeley research
Research from UC Berkeley shows that this is one of the best clean cooking projects in the world. You can read more about it here.
Partners in Pellets
The project was initiated by the partnership of ‘Partners in Pellets’ with FairClimateFund, BioMassters Ltd., Mimi Moto, BIX Capital, and TRAIDE, and was pre-financed by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).
