Out with Charcoal, In with Briquettes

Alternative Waste Technologies manufactures affordable, healthy and environmentally friendly charcoal briquettes for households in informal settlements and distributed through community based sales agents. This will result in access to cleaner cooking fuels for households while creating employment opportunities for youth and women in the community. Overall AWT will contribute to a better economic outcome for households due to reduced expenditure on cooking fuels, better health outcome for the family because of reduced carbon emission and environmental protection through use of agro- wastes that are environmentally friendly. We are a registered company based in Kenya.

Mission Statement

Providing affordable, healthy and eco-friendly agro-waste charcoal alternatives across Kenya.

Problem

With Informal household settlements earning between $3 – 5 USD per day, almost 50% of their daily income is spent on cooking fuel which is preferably wood fuel usually regarded as the poor person’s energy source since the alternative energy sources are beyond the means of most Kenyans. According to Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (2017), the average retail price of a 4kg tin of charcoal in Kenya has increased from 49 KES in June 2011 to 63 KES in June 2012 to 70 KES in June 2013 to KES 100 in April 2019. In Africa, it is estimated that wood fuel (including firewood and charcoal) constitutes nearly 90% of wood consumed for energy purposes with the official charcoal production for Africa standing at 30.6 million tons in 2012, worth between US$9.2 billion and US$24.5 billion annually. Fuelled by rapid population growth, urbanization and the increasing cost of alternative fuels, the demand for charcoal is expected to double in Africa by 2030.

Solution

Since we began production in 2016, we have increased our production capacity from 350Kg a day to 500Kg in an hour. Using available resources, we have began construction of a new production plant that will give us room for expansion.

Scaling Strategy: 1. Increased Production of Biomass Briquettes

Strategy 2: Increased drying space.

Strategy 3: Increase Production space

Old production space

New production space.

We are therefore seeking an additional funding of $3,000 to complete the construction plant to allow the scale- up in manufacture of charcoal briquettes to supply to informal settlements in urban areas in Kenya.