CHARCOAL WASTE

Part of my mandate is to turn the charcoal industry around and make it sustainable. This can only be done by fact-finding and one of the first questions asked, “is the charcoal industry wasteful?” Are too many trees being cut down with no benefit to the natural environment or to the community? Over the years, I have heard the accusation that as much as 40 percent of all charcoal kilns fail. This is to say that after the kiln is fired, the charcoal maker loses control of the kiln and the kiln just becomes a big fire. With the waste of valuable timber and the loss of wages to the community. After a kiln has completed its purpose and has cooled, a rush is on to get the sellable charcoal to market. This usually results in the loss of perfectly good products being contaminated with the soil that was used to cover the pile of logs during the firing of the kiln. This valuable product is in the form of charcoal dust and smaller pieces of charcoal. We will deal the solution to this problem with, we will introduce better kilns to reduce waste from uncontrolled kiln fires burning up good saleable products and from contamination of charcoal by the collapse of the earth-made kiln. And secondly, the charcoal dust and small pieces of charcoal will be bagged and sold by the community to the Agency for making briquettes.