A briquette producing company GreenTech Vision recently trained a group of welders in Sanyang Village, Kombo south District, West Coast Region on cooking stove production. The training is aimed at enabling welders to be able to reproduce the cooking stove in large quantities so that local communities could have easy access to the product. The innovation was funded under the UNDP Global Environmental Facility (GEF) -Small Grants Programme (SGP) project aimed at tackling environmental challenges and improve livelihoods. The project, is designed to introduce fuel briquettes, fuel-efficient stoves and alternative fish smoking technologies in the coastal villages of Tanji, Sanyang and Gunjur. It is also meant to tackle deforestation, loss of biodiversity and climate change and improve livelihoodsthrough the protection of natural resources, emission reduction, saving of household finances and income generation. The company signed a one-week contract with eight welding workshops in Sanyang to prepare four different types of cooking stoves, with the option of extending it if the company is satisfied with the work. Lengja Guenther, the chairperson of GreenTech Vision, disclosed that GreenTech was established in 2012 with a view to promoting the new cooking stove and fuel briquettes. "These fuel briquettes are made from groundnut shells, which are waste products, turned to energy," she explained, noting that the aim is to save the forest. She dilated on the importance of the forest, adding that the stove could be very instrumental in the protection of the environment and forest covers as well as save families resources and energy.
Guenther revealed that the project aims to distribute 300 stoves in all their intervention villages and those stove will be produced by the welders in the villages.
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