Bangladesh Bondhu Foundation (BBF), a Bangladeshi organisation, is delivering the stove from door to door with the help of the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ- Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)

Anyone interested in using ‘Bondhu Chula’ is requested to contact this number- 01833104100. 

GIZ

In Bengali, the word Bondhu means friend and the word Chula means cooking stove. Bondhu Chula is a fuel-efficient, health, environment, and climate-friendly stove. The stove is connected to a long pipe for the smoke produced to be passed in the air outside in such a way that anyone in or outside the kitchen would not be affected by the smoke. In rural areas women often have their children with them when cooking, so the smoke coming from common earthen stoves affects both the mothers and the children. Around 90 percent families in Bangladesh are using ordinary stoves for cooking. The smoke produced from such large number of common stoves lead to 50 thousand premature deaths every year and 2.5 million cases of people suffering from asthma. Moreover, around 60 million tons of firewood is used as fuel in these common stoves every year, leading to extensive forest logging. ‘Bondhu Chula’ will help the people to come out of this scenario and lead a better and healthy life. Source: https://www.thedailystar.net/business/bondhu-chula-healthy-living-1372822  Bangladesh Bondhu Foundation (BONDHU) is conducting Bondhu Chula activities across the country. These activities are part of the development program of the Government of Bangladesh and are instrumental in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The local government is playing an important role in implementing these activities. The local entrepreneurs manufacture and sell the stove and the Bondhu Chula doctors provide the stove installation and after-sales service. Bangladesh Bondhu Foundation is providing one Bondhu Chula per family at a subsidized price. The Bondhu Chula can be used for at least five years with proper maintenance. The advantages of using a Bondhu stove are as follows - (i) Proper use saves more than 50% of fuel; (ii) The kitchen is smoke and pollution-free; (iii) Kitchen tin spoils less; (iv) It takes less time to collect fuel; (v) The kitchen is not covered with soot, and the pots and pans are less dirty; (vi) Reduces deforestation. (vii) Emits at least 1.5 tons less carbon dioxide per year. This reduces the risk of climate change.

http://bondhufoundation.org/Project/Current_Project

1200 BDT per unit

Fully ready

Currently, more than 5,000 entrepreneurs are involved in the Bondhu Chula Programme, who are setting up this enviornmentally friendly stove at a cost of Tk 1,200 across the country. Nearly two million stoves have been sold in the country so far. Source: https://www.thedailystar.net/business/bondhu-chula-healthy-living-1372822

Bondhu Chula users were asked whether the use of the stove reduced indoor air pollution. About 99 per cent of households reported that the use of Bondhu Chula reduced indoor air pollution. The health outcomes in this study are self-reported and measured in terms of the number of eye irritation and the number of respiratory problems a woman suffers per month. For both eye-related and respiratory problems, study results show significant negative effects (i.e., health-improving effects). The results show that women with Bondhu Chula have on average 5.55-6.66 times lower eye irritation compared to the women who use traditional stoves and the same women have on average 0.90-1.28 times lower respiratory problems relative to women who cook using traditional stoves.  Source:https://www.thedailystar.net/business/economy/news/time-raise-awareness-about-benefits-bondhu-chula-2968431

The Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) carried out field research on the impact of Bondhu Chula. Propensity score matching, a quasi-experiment econometric method, was applied using the 2018 household survey data of the BIDS that collected information from 600 users of Bondhu Chula and 396 users of traditional cook stoves. It was found that about 90 per cent of the study households depend on fuelwood for their energy need for cooking, whether they use Bondhu Chula or not. Other fuels used by both groups of households included tree leaves, hay or jute cake, dung and wooden powder. Except for cow dung, the energy consumption was much less among households using Bondhu Chula compared to the households using traditional cook stoves. This indicates the efficiency of Bondhu Chula in terms of fuel need. The efficiency of Bondhu Chula in fuel use was also observed by comparing the energy use of households before and after the installation of Bondhu Chula. The pertinent statistics showed that energy use significantly dropped after the installation of Bondhu Chula. This was observed for all types of fuel used by Bondhu Chula users. From these results, one can conclude that the use of Bondhu Chula significantly lowers biomass energy consumption. One can also infer that this reduction of energy use significantly reduces air pollution and deforestation because 91 per cent of the sampled households used fuelwood for the purpose of cooking and the sources of fuelwood were mainly trees. The results of the econometric exercise show that the impact of Bondhu Chula use on household biomass energy is significant. It was found that the use of Bondhu Chula reduces the per capita biomass fuel consumption on average, with a range of 9.75 kg to 12.25 kg per month. In terms of percentage reduction, this is about 30-37 per cent compared to the amount of biomass fuel used by traditional cook stoves. The laboratory test, as conducted in Bangladesh by the BCSIR, claims that Bondhu Chula saves 50 per cent fuel compared to traditional cook stoves. The difference between claimed fuel reduction and empirically obtained reduction is perhaps due to varying cooking habits practised by the surveyed households. Based on the above findings, the average level of savings in biomass fuel consumption due to the use of Bondhu Chula to be about 11 kg per household member per month, which is about 600 kg per household per year. With more than 29 million households, Bangladesh has a great market potential for Bondhu Chula. With 67 per cent of households using more than one stove, this could increase the total number of stoves to more than 50 million. Taking this potential market into account, the potential fuelwood consumption saving is about 30 million tonnes per year, which is about 51 per cent of the country's total fuelwood consumption. When converting this biomass fuel-saving into the potential reduction of carbon dioxide emission, we obtain that the use of Bondhu Chula would potentially reduce 50.49 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission per year nationally. Source: https://www.thedailystar.net/business/economy/news/time-raise-awareness-about-benefits-bondhu-chula-2968431