We’re targeting our wood burning cook stove at countries where deforestation is a major problem.  Wait…a wood burning stove is going to help in the fight against deforestation?

At first glance, this seems like a really bad idea.  Other technologies like gasification are more efficient and can use almost any organic material, but there are 2 major problems: they’re unfamiliar and they’re more expensive.

Of the women we’re designing our stove for, very few have ever cooked on anything other than an open flame.  As you can imagine, when you do something one way your whole life, you get quite good at it.  The further a technology is from a simple open fire, the less familiar it is, which translates to our users trusting it less initially.

The other problem is up front cost and risk of new technologies.  Most of the stoves that are available in the area don’t last very long because they’re made cheaply (thin metal) or use fragile materials (ceramics).  Users will pay up to a couple dollars for these stoves, and not get more than a couple months use from them.  This is why the marketing aspect is so important.

But marketing can only take you so far; you can’t get someone to pay a month (or more) of their salary for a stove–no matter how technically superior it is.  And even with great marketing, it’s hard to convince someone to cook in a manner that’s completely alien to them.  This is why we’ve developed a stove that’s more efficient and which looks high tech, but that fits pretty seamlessly into the existing cooking culture.

We do believe that there’s a place for gassifiers, solar cookers, etc.  But we also believe the best way to get there is baby steps.

Recently at the Cool Product Expo, we got a lot of great questions from people.  As I was explaining our goals for the project, one man asked me, “what do you mean by sustainable?”  What a great question!

Our goal from the start has been to create a cook stove that can be completely sustained within a local market.  One aspect of this is economic sustainability.  From the start, our cook stove has been designed to be as cheap as possible.  It needs to be a product that families living on $1-$2 a day can afford and one that saves them money over time.  (Current prototypes currently “pay for themselves” in about 3 months and are priced below what most potential customers say they would pay.)

But, even if it makes sense economically, our cook stove needs to be something that people want to buy and are willing to assume the risk on.  It’s surprising to some people, but marketing plays a big role even in the developing world.  This is especially true of anything that’s perceived as a risk or an “unknown”.

Sustainable also means being manufacturable using local (or easily importable) materials, tools, and know-how.  Shipping costs are of course a concern, but helping build local industry and entrepreneurship know-how is equally important.  It also fits nicely into our design philosophy of building prototypes, getting them into the hands of users, getting real feedback, and doing it often.

Sustainability is at the heart of what we’re trying to do.