Australia's Russell Collins has developed a Himalayan rocket stove or Smokeless Stove that is energy efficient, clean, and less polluting. It uses four to five times less firewood than a conventional stove for burning.
Australia and Australians are concerned about the environment across the globe; many Australians help the developing country to find natural and energy efficient options. One of this kind of innovation is Himalayan rocket stove. Australian innovator Russell Collins developed the furnace that is energy efficient, clean, and less polluting. It uses four to five times less firewood than a conventional stove for burning.
Speaking with SBS Hindi Russell Collins said “Initially the project called The Himalayan Rocket stove, which was aimed at providing a very efficient clean burning cooking and heating stove for people of Himalaya and Now we have a parallel project what we call as smokeless cook stove revolution, which is not for profit project aimed at training people on how they can make their own smokeless cook stove. We found in our prototyping in Ladakh we found an incredibly cheap way how to do this."
Source: Supplied by Russell
Russell visited India for the first time in 1992. He fell in love with Himalaya region of India and started bringing tourists to India every year through his venture. Russell traveled widely in the lower Himalayan region. He interacted with the locals and observed their lifestyle whenever he got the chance during his tours.
He met the innovator Sonam Wangchuk (his story inspired Aamir Khan’s character Phunsukh Wangdu or Rancchoddas Shyamaldas Chanchad (Rancho) in the film 3 Idiots) in Ladakh many times over the years while bringing groups of Spiti children to Ladakh on eco-educational tours. In 2013 Sonam Wangchuk encouraged me to take up the project to develop smokeless stove. So He started researching. Russell recalled that there were seven failed prototypes before he could make a working model.
He shares about how he was inspired to take up this project," yeah well...Initially, my motivation for the whole project from the beginning was seeing deforestation of Himalaya and then coming with this device which is very efficient, but its the way that these particular stoves work and both the projects work on the same technology. And technology is a straightforward mechanism that burns at very high temperature, high enough to burn smoke, so people have the double benefit ."
To test the prototype, he ran a crowdfunding campaign in Australia for the seed funding and attracted the attention of a primary sponsor. Then he set up a small manufacturing unit in Ladakh. He then rolled out the first batch of 30 stoves and donated all of them to lower income households, nunneries, and monasteries there.
Russell is also conducting workshops to train locals to make another type of the stove made from clay in Ladhakh, Delhi, Chandigarh, Madhya Pradesh and some other parts of India. He was invited to TEDx at Ranchi.
Russell recollects in one of his workshops at Kanha, Madhya Pradesh he was expecting 25 to 30 people there were more than 100 people came to attend. It was an overwhelming moment for him.
In the end, he says, "India has an incredible expression of diversity. India has the full spectrum of human experiences here; it has the extremes of positives and negatives."
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