By using agricultural waste to produce long-burning charcoal briquettes, GreenChar is reducing deforestation and improving public health.

GreenChar produces and distributes LongBurn charcoal briquettes made from agricultural waste. The low-cost briquettes are sold to households in rural and peri-urban settlements that spend an average of $1.50 per day on traditional wood-based charcoal briquettes or firewood for cooking.

Household air pollution is emerging as a major health risk and is responsible for more than 4.3 million premature deaths globally every year. The biggest and most common contributor to this pollution is the use of biomass fuel for cooking in our traditional cookstoves.  According to GreenChar, the company’s briquettes are significantly cheaper, twice as energy dense, and burn for twice as long as conventional wood charcoal and firewood, while at the same time being nearly smokeless.

By using waste as a fuel resource, the briquettes help to curb local deforestation and reduce CO2 emissions from manufacturing of charcoal. Since launching in 2014, GreenChar has sold more than 138,000 kg of their briquettes.

We can only solve the challenge of access to clean energy by empowering indigenous communities to be part of the solution.

Tom Osborn – Co-Founder, GreenChar Solutions.

Currently, more people die globally from health problems associated with incremental, ongoing inhalation of household smoke than from malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined. Additionally, Kenya loses 12,000 hectares of forest cover every year, with charcoal manufacture being a large driver of demand. With the use of safe and environmentally sustainable cooking fuels, such as GreenChar’s LongBurn briquettes, health problems and environmental impacts are curbed.