The Community Cooker
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 21/Sep/2010 02:27, 34 days ago
For more than a year, my friend Marco has been telling me about his architecture firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative called theCommunity Cookerwithin the slums in Nairobi.  On Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit it in Kibera and it’s definitely something worth celebrating! The Community Cooker is the brainchild of the Chairman of the architecture firmPlanning Systems Servicesand it evolved from a determination to address the massive accumulation of garbage in streets throughout Africa, while at the same time mitigating deforestation.  It converts piles of garbage, including organic matter, plastic bags and even‘flying toilets’ into energy to make hot water for washing, sterilize water for drinking and heat for cooking. It uses garbage as a fuel for activities such as cooking, baking and boiling water and has two complementary functions: 1.    To burn garbage thereby addressing the associated health, sanitation and esthetical issues of garbage, especially in informal settlements.2.    To provide communities with an alternative source of fuel to charcoal for cooking meals and boiling water, thereby mitigating deforestation throughout Africa. Here is how it works:Step 1: Garbage collection: A community, or a specific group within a community, collects garbage within informal settlements using baskets, bags and wheelbarrows.Step 2:  Garbage is deposited and sorted on the lowest of the three stepped steel welded mesh racks.  Operators receive training in solid waste management and ensure that non-combustible materials and materials which create harmful fumes are intercepted and removed, such as glass and rubber.  Biodegradable scraps that fall through become compost manure.  The remaining garbage such as plastic bags, packaging, food scraps and even flying toilets, is placed on the second tiered rack for drying.  Dry materials are shoveled down the slide to the firebox.Step 3: Incineration: Two simple taps are the only moving controls on the cooker: one tap controls a drip flow of recycled sump oil (discarded oil from vehicles) and one tap controls a drip flow of water.  A drop of each, in equal amounts, falls onto a super-heated steel plate of the firebox, where water vaporizes into hydrogen and oxygen which causes a combustive reaction with the flames, thereby increasing the temperature from 250 degrees Celsius to more than 800 degrees Celsius, the World Health Organization (WHO) standard for incinerators in developing countries.  As the firebox gets hotter, the network of steel pipes are heated that pass around the cooker.  As the garbage burns, heat is distributed among 8 cooking plates and 2 ovens on the top of the Cooker.Step 4: Cooking using garbage as a fuel: The cooker can be used by either individuals or community groups to cook food for their own use or as an income generating activity.  The cooker has 8 cooking plates, as well as an oven which is large enough to bake up to 10 loaves of bread or roast an entire goat.  It can be used 24 / 7 as an income generating activity, either by individuals or community groups.   Step 5: Cleaner waste: A tall and narrow chimney rises out of the firebox, between the hotplates.  A nearly odourless white vapour produced from the incinerator emerges from the chimney far away from the spotless cooking area.  At the present time, it costs only approximately US$13,000 to set up a community cooker which, once established, has no operating expenses, can be repaired using local materials and can run for an indefinite period of time for free. This innovative, yet simplistic innovation truly has the potential to transform informal settlements into resource rich communities.