Prakti Design: the challenge of clean combustion for the poor

Three billion people rely on open fire or polluting and non-efficient biomass stoves for cooking and heating. These households, mostly women and young children, are exposed to harmful indoor air pollution. This is the fourth mortality cause in the world, and second cause of death in developing countries, below aids but above well-known ailments such as malaria or tuberculosis. The use of these stoves impacts also the environment with unsustainable forestry and biomass exploitation and the livelihoods. In Haiti, 97% of the island is deforested and over 70% of the population depends on biomass (charcoal and firewood) for cooking. Prakti Design, a clean stove developer, aims at addressing this social issue with an integrated strategy from design to manufacturing and distribution of highly efficient and affordable biomass cookstoves, with a reduction from 40 to 80% of fuel consumption and 60 to 100% decrease of emissions (carbon monoxide and particulate matters). Using state-of-art stove design backed up with participatory field testing with end-users and unique partnership with a stove manufacturer, Prakti has developed stoves responding to the specific needs of Haitian cooking, with fastest and cleanest cooking time and fuel consumption among existing clean stoves distributed in Haiti. This article explains the unique social business model of this efficient stove company and discusses ways for scaling up sustainably the dissemination of energy-efficient and non polluting biomass cookstoves among the poor.