Green Charcoal
Remember charcoal? Before we had a propane cookstove for patio ,we had a charcoal cookstove . We would go to Safeway and buy a bag of Kingston briquettes. Sometimes these were self lighting but usually we would pour some charcoal lining fluid on them. Charcoal was a small luxury for Americans.
In Haiti, in contrast ,charcoal has been an essential of life. So essential that the Haitians managed to cut down all but 2% of the forests on their island. It may be a strange idea but charcoal consumption to cook food was devastating to the agricultural industry necessary to produce the same food.
Now a nonprofit company, Carbon Roots International, has come up with a simple but miraculous answer. Teir “green charcoal” comes from charred agricultural waste. In Haiti, for example, sugar cane harvesting generates “bagasse.” Carbon Roots International trains farmers and entrepreneurs to char the waste in simple kilns. They pay the farmers for the charred material, and compresses it into briquettes.
In April, CRI won a grant of $100,000 from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Development Innovation Ventures.
Charcoal? Is there really active research into this stuff?
Someone told me there is even an effort from a Czech company to create a gourmet charcoal and the Myrvald is thinking about buying the company so he can write a second cooking book based n charcoal cooking!
To make briquettes main components are industrial waste,agricultural waste and forestry waste. All the divested material collected and compressed under high pressure with he help of biomass briquette plant and as an finished product briquettes are made.
Sounds like a neat product. Is there anything like this being sold in the US? Seems to me there might be a market here in the Northwest for a less polluting alternative to the wood fire.
Really, the bio fuel briquettes are helpful to make clean and healthy environment. The biomass briquetting plant provides the pollution free briquette which is made from the green waste, burns without producing ash .
So have you considered marketing them as a green product in the US? Seems like a natural for Whole Foods or Trader Joes! I know an entrepreneur who might be interested.