This week saw Zomba Theological University take another step towards creating the green campus of which it dreams. We have installed a briquette-making facility. This involves constructing a pit where materials like waste paper and fallen leaves can be soaked before being compressed into combustible bricks by a hand-driven device designed for this purpose.
Our goal is that the briquettes will replace charcoal as a fuel of choice for those who use open fires for cooking. One of the major reasons for the devastating deforestation taking place in Malawi is that many trees are cut down in order to make charcoal. This is lucrative business in a country where the majority have no access to electricity and where charcoal is the most efficient fuel for cooking.
It is widely known that charcoal production is doing great damage to Malawi’s environment. The snag is that, for many people, there is no alternative if they wish to continue feeding their families from day to day. Here is where the briquettes come in. They can compete with charcoal for efficiency and are made entirely from recycled materials.
A point made recurrently in our our recent conference about Malawi’s trees is the extent to which the problems of poverty and environmental crisis are interlinked to the extent that you cannot solve one without solving the other. We know that we need to stop burning charcoal for the sake of the environment yet for many families it appears necessary to their survival. We hope that the briquettes might offer an alternative.
We are starting with our own campus but we hope that students who gain the skills in briquette-making will put them to use in future in the many different contexts where they will serve. Admittedly, this is a small step against the scale of the crisis. But might it be an accumulation of small steps that will enable our human community to build a sustainable future?
Thinking Mission Blog 