How do you do your cooking? - Briquette Making from Waste

One of the neat projects that LEAD is doing in Malawi  is briquette making which combines waste, forestry and energy management while creating livelihood opportunities. 

At home in Canada, from making tea or cooking a meal, I can simply flip a switch and start cooking on my stove. Even when I'm camping, I bring along my Coleman Stove or BBQ or propane burner and turn a knob and start cooking. Here in Malawi, with only 7% of the population with electricity access and with the high cost of gas not to mention fuel shortages (and the costs of stoves), the majority of people rely on firewood or charcoal for their everyday cooking, placing a huge burden on Malawi's dwindling forests. 

Our Night Security Cooking dinner

Briquettes, made up of compressed and shredded biomass waste, can be a nice alternative to firewood use, provide income to the briquette makers, and find a use for all that biomass waste found in this predominantly agricultural society (rice husks, corn husks, paper waste, peanut shells, saw dust, dry grasses, and even leaves). When we first arrived in Malawi, LEAD had done some biomass briquette making (and paper making) trainings with about 35 people from Zomba's outer villages and built a briquette making center near the University (Chanco). I (Josh) was fortunate enough to join the group of Malawians on a field trip to Thyolo in Southern Malawi to see other organizations that had been doing the same and do some peers to peer knowledge transfer. The visit was coordinated by a local NGO based in Blantyre called Renew'N'Able renewnablemalawi.org that is doing some cool sustainable livelihood projects in Malawi.

Upon arrival, our trainees had broken out into song, with lyrics thanking us for this opportunity and how grateful they were. See video below...

Thankful participants

First stop was Thyolo Paper Making, a success story, where as a young orphan, a boy found he had a talent in creating art from waste paper and sold that art to pay for his school fees (you have to pay for secondary school here). He continued to sell it slowly and built up his business to the nice art and craft store below involving several villagers now. They use locally available waste material (paper waste for paper making and banana leaves/clothing scraps for artwork) and make everything by hand.

Participants gathering to try paper making

Explaining how to make paper.

Of course all the kids from the nearby villages come to watch (and learn) as well

Paper drying away....almost ready for some art

Showing the group some art tricks

Example of the art on the recycled paper

Christmas Cards

Contact info in case you want to place an order or learn more :)

The workshop owner  (Hudson) with some briquettes and artwork behind him

Our next stop was Nchima Trust Community Centre to learn how to make briquettes from people who have done it for years. http://www.nchimatrust.org/

Nchima Trust Centre with some awesome poses from the kids.

The biomass briquettes: The end product!

The starting waste: this group was using mostly paper waste to form their briquettes
Start by shredding/tearing the waste.

Add waste with water to form a slurry then mashed in a giant mortar and pestle. 

The mortar and pestle are tools that  most families own to mash their maize into maize flour (to make nsima). It is back breaking work, I tried for a bit causing laughter amongst the Malawians 

Mash Mix Mash Mix Mash

Next is to set up the mold under the press

And add the slurry in the mold 

Turn the crank and squeeze the biomass into a compact briquette (increase energy/volume)
while squeezing out excess water.

Let the briquettes dry in the sun and then they are ready for use.

If I recall correctly, they demonstrators said they could make 4 to 6 an hour and they sell them at 30-40 MWK (about 20 cents) each. Considering that minimum wage for non-skilled labour is around 30 MWK/hour (15 cents) it could be economically viable alternative livelihood solution, depending how they source the waste (hopefully free and nearby) and the equipment (donated). Of course the biggest challenge is creating a market for briquettes and breaking into the firewood and charcoal markets which are very familiar and strong. Educating people on the benefits of briquettes would help this I suppose, but habits and stigmas are hard to break.

Specially made briquette stove to ensure efficient heat conservation and burning

Overall it was a fantastic introduction to Malawian culture and to see some of the challenges that Malawians face as well. Future work with the briquettes are to research the best ratios of leaves/paper/saw dust etc for burning, creating and finding markets for this product, and education & training.

They also had a large rain water capture system where people would drink from. Nice!