Activity 1   

How many cigarettes does Rani‘s kitchen smoke in a day?

  = 1kg of fuel wood per day

Rani has six people in her family. Cooking for everyone requires 1kg of fuel wood per head. Now every kg emits as much as 129 mg of Carbon Monoxide (CO). A cigarette, on the other hand, emits 58.8 mg of CO. So now all you have to calculate is, in terms of CO emissions, how many cigarettes would have to be smoked in the kitchen to match the wood smoke emissions?

=

Know your Chulha!

• America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that wood smoke is 12 times more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke and it attacks the body cells 40 times longer than tobacco smoke.
   
• A fireplace operating for an hour, burning 4 kg of wood during that time, generates 4,300 times more carcinogenic particles than 30 cigarettes.
   
• A wood stove (chulha) is 500 times more polluting than an oil burner and 1000 times dirtier than heating with gas!

    Activity 2   

Pick up your pencils and match the fuel with its correct fuel efficiency % and its CO2 emissions (gms per megajoule of energy delivered). How many did you get right?

Efficiency (%)		Fuel	CO2 Emissions
49.5		Biogas	565
22.8		LPG Gas	138
14.6		Kerosene	126
53.6		Wood	876
10.1		Crop Residues	305
57.4		Dung	144

Answers:
Activity 1 : Six people would require 6 kg of fuelwood in a day. 6 kg of fuelwood would emit 6X129 mg of CO = 774 mg. 774 mg divided by 58.8 mg results in about 13 cigarettes a day.

Activity 2: Fuel Efficiency Emissions

Dung = 10.1 876
Crop residues = 14.6 565
Wood =  22.8 305
Kerosene = 49.5 138
LPG Gas = 53.6 126
Biogas = 57.4 144

Do you...>>

>>...spend about 12 hours in your day to haul water and gather fuelwood needed for cooking, bathing and washing in the house?

Fact: Women spend roughly 12 hours in a day in Nepal just on survival activities.

>>...carry loads that weigh nearly as much as your body weight over long distances every day?

Fact: 10,000 women fuelwood carriers in Addis Ababa, who supply a third of the city’s wood fuel, suffer frequent falls, bone fractures, eye problems, headaches, rheumatism, anaemia, chest, back and internal disorders, miscarriages, from carrying loads often weighing 40-50 kg— nearly as much as their own body weights

>>... and your family spend most of the income just on groceries and other food products, leaving very little for anything else?

Fact: Women fuelwood carriers surveyed in Gujarat India use most of their income for just buying food.

>>...have men in your family who spend more time than women collecting fuel and water for daily needs?

Fact: In some developing countries girls spend more than 7 times as many hours in wood and water collection as compared to men.

>>...and your mother get greeted with deadly smoke each time you go to the kitchen to cook?

Fact: It is estimated that more than half of the world's households cook with wood, crop residues and untreated coal. Women and children have the highest exposures to indoor air pollution.

>>...have guns fired at you when you go out of your homes?

Fact: Residents of Sarajevo during the armed conflict in the nineties often faced sniper fire while gathering fuel on a daily basis.

>>...get discriminated against wherever you are in physical danger just doing your daily activities?

Fact: Throughout the world women face unequal treatment under the law, and often face violence and abuse as both girls and women.

>>...go to the forest and gather 1kg of wood every time your mother had to make 400 gms of chapatis for your family?

Fact: In Mexico, the average housewife requires 1 kg wood for every 400 gms of tortillas that are made. (A tortilla is something like a chapati made of maize corn flour)

>>...spend half of your energy and the day grazing cows, goats and sheep to earn some money for your family?

Fact: Almost half of the human energy in rural areas of developing countries is spent on grazing livestock (5 to 8 hours/day/household), a crucial source of supplementary household income.