Bottom-line Impact

Every stage of the production cycle has economic, environmental and social costs and benefits. Stoves model produced by SEECO create jobs, liners are purchased from various artisans and others are trained to produce claddings on cash bases. Artisans are paid after quality assurance verification of their components.

Liners are made from local materials, hence eliminates emissions involved in international shipping. The extraction of clay, however, promotes land degradation and soil erosion. In addition, the clay must be baked at high temperatures which requires a significant amount of biomass fuel and emits CO2. Claddings are also has additional costs and benefits. Again, international shipping emissions are avoided. The inputs are then collected for assembling at the workshop, generally SEECO staff 8hours a day and 5 days a week. There is a major benefit of transferring of skills among the employees. The only waste produced is scrap metal which is generally collected in a specific area for selling to the scrap dealers.

Finished stoves are then distributed to the selling centers and agents. One selling center for example Dar es Salaam sells around 300-400 stoves per month. Some of them are sold through agents points and thus provides additional income to the agents. End-uses of the produced stoves agreed to have cut down the amount and costs of charcoal used, which means that there is less deforestation, less emissions and more money saved by the end-users.

The stove does not lead to direct time saving through cooking, but does save time for those who gather their own wood/charcoal. Some of the surveyed end users were very happy with the technology and are using them daily; the stoves have been of healthy, economic, social and environmental benefit to them.

They are now relieved from inhaling hazardous smoke, destructing the environment by cutting trees.

Major complains from stoves users/customers has been the problem of cracking of the liners but this has been taken care by the company, customers are being educated on the proper use and up keep of the stoves to ensure durability.