Woodpiles

One of my most powerful memories of El Salvador will be the woodpiles. Being from Maine and having heated with wood I was familiar with woodpiles. However, here in El Salvador, wood fires are the most common source of heat for cooking. There are several problems caused by this phenomenon: deforestation, health problems , and continuing poverty.

• El Salvador is second only to Haiti in the New World for deforestation with only two percent of its land forested.
• The World Health Organization says that respiratory ailments brought on by household smoke are the number one cause of death in children under five years of age. Papusas or thick corn tortillas are a staple in the local diet being served with every meal. They are usually cooked on an open fire within the home. In addition to air quality related issues, many children are burned on the open fires.
• The average poor family in El Salvador spends about a dollar a day on wood or an equivalent amount of scarce of labor to gather and prepare wood.

Home Woodpile	Roadside Papusaria

Woodcutter’s Shop	Woodcutter’s Tools

There have been many efforts to design and distribute cleaner burning woodstoves for developing counties. One of the most successful efforts is lead by Stove Team International http://www.stoveteam.org .

We visited their plant in Sonsonate, El Salvador. The factory builds several versions of the Ecocina stove. They have a capacity to build about 800 stoves per month and are currently turning out about 300. They cost about $42 to build and are sold to other NGO’s for about $48 including the taxes. Homeowners can buy them from various NGO’s including ESNA for $21 spread over 4 payments. If wood is costing a family one dollar per day and these stove cut wood usage by about forty percent, the payback period is about two months.

The Plant Shows its Solidarity with Social Justice Advocates

Oven and Three Stove Models	Starting Fire	Mature Fire – Little Smoke

Forms for Cement Body	Metal Fabrication Shop	Adding Insulation

Here we saw the old and the new, but the old was being used and not the new. The volunteer mother said that she had not been trained how to use the new industrial Ecocina. As always adoption is the key to long-term success.	On the next day with a new volunteer mother, we saw the new stove in use.

 

And here's what it's all about--feeding the children