- Bamboo trunk cuts carbon emissions.
A Ugandan, Divine Nabaweesi, the CEO of Divine Bamboo, is breaking barriers in the country, making briquettes from bamboo. Divine stated that her passion stems from the desire to contribute to global climate action, saying, “I wanted to do something that would encompass both my passion for nature but also that would help in the fight against climate change and deforestation”.
Currently, Divine Bamboo, her company, plants thousands of bamboo to get the raw material to produce briquettes. This is a strategic action based on the high dependency, among the residents of Uganda, on fuelwood, in the form of charcoal and firewood, for co0king.
“It is not enough to just tell people don’t cut down trees. People still need a livelihood, they still need to eat, they need to earn an income, so if we can give them an alternative in the form of bamboo which grows fast, in three years they would be harvesting”, says Divine Nabaweesi, CEO Divine Bamboo.
The same bamboo forest can regenerate for up to 50 years. However, reports reveal that affordable clean cooking remains one of Uganda’s most significant environmental challenges.
Divine Bamboo is working towards the production of 100% bamboo briquettes as more farmers join the supply chain. The value chain begins with dry bamboo harvesting, cutting into smaller pieces before putting these pieces into a carbonizer
“The carbonizer is where bamboo is burned in a condition without oxygen because if you allow oxygen, you will just have ash in the end. So it is carbonized, and then after that, you have bamboo charcoal basically. But because we are making bamboo briquettes, we then have to crush the bamboo charcoal and mix it with a binder, and then it comes out from a machine called an extruder”.
“There is a growing number of people who are conscious about the environment, and so they don’t feel comfortable using charcoal anymore, and they are happy if they can find an alternative”, Nabaweesi says.