Amasaman (GAR), Dec. 6, GNA – CookClean Ghana and Spark Grills USA have introduced the use of cookstoves to the chiefs and people of Kpobikope Community of about 2000 inhabitants in the Ga West Municipality to enhance their health.
The production of the cookstoves was under a project dubbed: “Stove Village Project” to help minimise the impact of smoke on needy families who used solid fuels for cooking and save them from heart diseases, especially among women and children.
Mr Nicholas Manu, the Chief Executive Officer of CookClean, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said about three billion people worldwide still relied on solid fuels like wood, charcoal, coal, dung and crop wastes in rudimentary stoves or open fires for cooking, lighting and heating.
“This way of cooking with inefficient fuels and technologies is a major contributor to indoor air pollution in the developing world, and causes four million deaths every year,” he said.
“Cleaner-burning cookstoves save lives, improve livelihood, and have massive health, environmental and women’s empowerment impact.”
Mr Manu said Ghana’s current forest growth was less than half of fuel wood demand and that made fuel wood an unsustainable energy option.
“It implies a huge loss of biodiversity, and major damage to the ecosystem, not only exacerbating the threat to species survival significantly, but also threatening food and water security for the human population, as deforestation increases,” he said.
“The felling of trees for fuel, in addition to agricultural practices, pose a serious threat to efforts to preserve the ecosystems and vegetation, the biodiversity and the way of life of the people,” he said.
Mr Manu said CookClean Ghana Limited has manufactured and sold 100,000 high-impact cookstoves over the last six years and that each one used 50 per cent less fuel than a traditional stove, saved a family 65 dollars per year in fuel costs and was much safer for women and children.
GNA