Post on 21-Apr-2015
Chulha, healthy indoor cookingPhilanthropy by Design
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking2 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 3
Contents
Philanthropy by Design | 4
Killer in the kitchen | 6
Design brief and initial idea | 8
From idea to concept development | 10
Stakeholder workshops | 14
Design Innovations | 16
Testing and user feedback | 18
Final design and its benefits | 20
Challenges and achievements | 24
What now and where to? | 26
Conclusions | 28
Acknowledgements | 30
For many women in rural India spending several hours a day cooking
over an indoor open stove is the norm. What these women fail
to realize is that there is a invisible killer in their kitchen: burning
biomass fuels causes almost 500,000 deaths every year in India alone.
(Source: WHO 2009)
This booklet illustrates how Philips Design’s Philanthropy by Design
initiative can use its design expertise to help these women continue
with their traditional culture, while empowering them to select a way
of cooking that does not endanger their lives. It describes the brief
and the open-innovation process used in creating the ‘Chulha’ –
a low-smoke stove that prevents sickness and death from indoor
air pollution due to cooking activities with biomass fuels in rural
low-income communities.
The Chulha not only benefits the end-user but also various
stakeholders active in the value chain of smokeless stoves. The
production and distribution of the Chulha stimulates the creation
of local entrepreneurial skills and provides low cost, affordable
solutions that reach those who really need them.
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking4 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 5
Philanthropy by Design
The philanthropy principle
An increasing number of companies choose to help communities
by donating their products or expertise to special projects.
Known as ‘strategic philanthropy’, this approach is driven
by the desire to combine social responsibility commitments
while supporting the company’s objectives to enhance brand
image, strengthen employee engagement, increase trust and
customers loyalty, and even develop new ways of working
and innovative solutions.
Philanthropy by Design
Back in 2005, Philips Design initiated the Philanthropy by
Design program with the vision of philanthropic giving
through donating creativity to design meaningful solutions that
empower some of the more fragile categories of society. The
program launched with a workshop entitled ‘A sustainable
design vision – design for sense and simplicity’, in which NGOs
shared some of their biggest challenges with Philips Design.
The Philanthropy by Design program aims to create and deploy
humanitarian propositions addressing social and environmental
issues. Leveraging Philips Design’s creative expertise and
socio-cultural knowledge, the program channels design talent
to develop meaningful and sustainable solutions that can
contribute to a better future for all. It also opens up new
perspectives in co-creating value through cooperation with
‘unconventional’ partners such as international organizations,
public bodies and social players with complementary
expertise and values.
Chulha; the first Philanthropic proposition
The Chulha is a low-tech stove for healthy indoor cooking
and is the first proposition resulting from the Philanthropy
by Design program. What’s significant of the Chulha is the
attempt to support the work of NGOs to create better
living conditions for very low-income users, stimulating local
entrepreneurial activities based on a deep understanding of
local needs and conditions. In the case of the Chulha, Philips
donates Intellectual Property and design to local stakeholders
as a philanthropic contribution to sustainable development.
This model of production and distribution engages and
stimulates the local infrastructure.
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking6 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 7
In 2007, Philips Design’s Philanthropy by Design initiative
focused on the issue of indoor air pollution caused by cooking
with biomass fuel in open stoves. The ambition was to fight
respiratory problems and deaths of many women and children
that, in rural areas around the world, still cook indoor burning
wood. Our design community worked together with local
Killer in the kitchen
stakeholders, including the end-user, in rural and semi-urban
India, in order to create a stove that:
- Burns bio-mass fuel efficiently and directs cleaned smoke
out of the house through a chimney
- Stimulates the formation of local entrepreneurial forces for
its production and distribution
“ Total world deaths from indoor air pollution due to burning solid fuels are estimated at 1,619,000 each year. India alone accounts for 25% of such deaths: almost 500,000 of the victims are women and children”
Source: WHO 2009
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The design brief challenged the Philips Design team to come up
with a low-smoke solution for healthy and safe cooking able to
fit the local socio-cultural and infrastructural conditions of rural
and semi-urban contexts of India. More specifically, objectives
were to design, develop and test a solution:
- Able to reduce indoor pollution and therefore health-related
diseases
- Able to respect local culinary habits and cooking behaviors
- Easy to access (locally produced and distributed), use
and maintain
- At low cost, to facilitate its diffusion and scalability
In order to feed the initial creative process, primary input from
NGOs and a first exploratory study in the field were used to
gather a basic understanding of local people’s cooking needs
and indoor air pollution in rural areas.
Design brief and initial idea
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking10 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 11
At this stage of the design process, a broader and deeper
research in the field was necessary to collect all information
required to develop a truly effective, context-specific solution.
Information was collected on local production and distribution
channels, people’s insights on various cooking behaviors and
culinary habits, user interaction with available devices, and
people’s purchasing power.
The design team – with the support of Green Earth, a local
sustainable development agency dealing with grass root
behaviors and social studies – gathered deeper, more specific
insights into people by carrying out research in the villages
of Kerwadi, Phaltan, Maltan and Karad, all in the state of
Maharashtra. The research consisted of an initial 3-day visit
and introductory meetings with people from the villages,
followed by one week of observations and in-depth interviews
targeting four rural and two semi-urban families. The
interviews, conducted in the local language (Marathi), were
kept quite informal. All the family members were observed,
with particular attention paid to the women who were
carrying out cooking activities.
Infrastructural conditions, production facilities and
distribution channels for stoves currently in use were
investigated using the network of ARTI, an NGO with
considerable expertise in the smokeless cooking domain.
A needs analysis of stakeholders already active in the business
From idea to concept development
of smokeless and non-smokeless stoves was performed by
organizing various focus groups involving local entrepreneurs
and self-help groups, in order to understand the major issues
they face with regard to current solutions and the replication
and scalability of their activities.
Current issues
It soon became clear from the results of the research that the
key local design requirements called for a cooking solution able
to fulfill the following physical and socio-cultural conditions:
- Adaptability to different biomass fuels (from wood to cow
dung), available in different seasons and locations
- Adaptability to people’s needs when cooking ‘chappati’
(bread), steaming rice, boiling water
- Adaptability to the use of different, non-standard cooking
vessels
- Adaptability to various logistic constraints
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking12 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 13
Variety of Biomass fuel collection and squatting
while cooking and preparing.
Lack of basic infrastructure and amenities and damage during
use – maintenance and thermal instability of materials.
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking14 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 15
User insights, and the findings relating to stakeholders’ needs
were used in a local workshop involving the various players
engaged in the design process (ARTI, SEDT, SHGs, two local
entrepreneurs and two users). The workshop, intended to
define the key product features desired, involved 16 participants
who were invited to share their viewpoints and concerns in
informal dialogues. The dialogues were then followed by
a session to conceptualize ideal stoves and their expected
performance within the contexts under investigation. During
this phase, several pages of insights (context-of-life cards)
offering a stakeholder’s needs analysis – including end-users’
needs – were circulated among ‘experts’ in the production,
distribution and use of wood-burning stoves, for their feedback
and refinement.
At the end of the workshop, key design features were
pinpointed and prioritized as ‘easy to use and maintain’,
‘context specific’, ‘flexible’, ‘able to radiate value’, and
‘accommodating’.
Stakeholder workshops
ARTI – Appropriate Rural Technology Institute
Technology research/development and training
NGO, technology integrator / provider to rural
communities for employment generation and
improving overall quality of rural life
SEDT – Socio Economic Development
Trust an NGO for field implementation and
development programs. Rural intelligence and
people mobilization on field
Two SHGs – Self-Help Groups Mahalaxmi
Bachat Gat & Dhanalaxmi Bachat Gat have
established a highly efficient socio – economic
network to empower women to become
entrepreneurs. Agents of change. Key link to
rural users.
Two local industrial entrepreneurs Rural and
Semi Urban – Individuals / Small Industrial
Units driven by economic and social
development in the long run.
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In the next step, a fine-tuning process conducted by the
design team proposed the following major design innovations:
- Modularity to facilitate distribution, installation and
reparability of both the stove and the chimney
- Mechanisms to ensure the chimney could be cleaned safely
(currently, where chimneys are available, they are monolithic
blocks which can be cleaned only from the roof)
- Improvement to construction (the weak bridge in current
stoves is a common problem)
- Flexibility of use for roasting and steaming, additional
functional features and appealing design format.
These innovations were incorporated in two versions of our
‘Chulha’: ‘Sampoorna’ and ‘Saral’. In collaboration with ARTI,
both versions have been translated into real applications. The
‘Saral’ is a double oven with a hotbox which costs between
9 to 11 Euros. The ‘Sampoorna’ offers a more sophisticated
solution, including a steamer, at a cost between 13 to 15 Euros.
The stoves and their chimneys are mainly made of concrete
modular components, covered with clay. Their modularity
facilitates the replacement of broken parts over time as well
as transportation. The stoves can be packed in recycled woven
polypropylene bags, which are by-products of waste from
agricultural storage, etc. The moulds are made of FRP – fiber
reinforced plastic – at a cost of 183 Euros, with the capacity
to turn out more than 3,000 pieces.
Design innovations
- Adaptability of use (different cooking
functions) and appealing design format
- Flexibility of use (biomass / wood) and
burn efficiency
- Easy transportation and cleaning of the
stove and the chimney (modularity)
- material improvements and easier
manufacturing
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Prototyping at the ARTI training centre in Phaltan, and testing
in rural and semi-urban homes, involved SHG representatives
and stove users. Feedback regarding improvements suggested
a few modifications to the initial versions of the stove.
Design interventions included technical changes related to
the manufacturing process to optimize gas flow within the
stoves and improve their thermal efficiency, an easier way of
assembling components such as self locking pieces for do-it-
yourself assembly, the introduction of a soot collector, and
a solution for fixing chimneys to the wall. Modified versions
were then installed in 12 homes for further trial and to
evaluate their technical performance.
Technical testing: College Pune and Approvecho
During the product development and testing phase, a technical
assessment of the Chulha has been conducted in laboratory to
define its eco-efficiency and emissions. Evaluation included a
certification of stove’s thermal performance, fuel consumption,
particles and carbon monoxide emissions. Stoves under testing
used bio-organic waste. The firewood used as fuel was free
from any potential pollutants.
Testing and user feedback
Quotes from users
“The stove is good for cooking regular meals.”
“ The second pot is very helpful for boiling
water / milk’”
“Most of the smoke goes out of the house”.
“ The house used to be full of smoke but now
it is much more clear”.
“We like the way it looks”.
“I like working at it”.
Test conducted: a few comparative values Saral Sampoorna Traditional
- Time requested for boiling 1 litre water 11.5 minutes 14 minutes 22 minutes
- Fuel requested for boiling 1 litre water 225gm 315gm 415gm
- Heating effeciency highest lower lowest
- Rate of cooling lowest lower highest
- Soot retention 100mg 80mg 20mg
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking20 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 21
The value co-creation process undertaken during this journey
of understanding and learning has resulted in a stove that makes
indoor cooking healthier, cleaner and faster when compared
with traditional indoor open cooking fires.
The Chulha also claims to be:
- Simple to use and easy to maintain
- Produced and distributed locally
- Relatively cheap
- Suitable for different culinary habits.
It also helped to go one step further. According to Dr. P. Karve
of ARTI, the overall research and design contribution has
helped in proposing a “Chulha that has a better chance of
succeeding than other concrete smokeless stoves because
it is more attractive, and has improved functional features”
(Karve 2007). It has helped to shape a stove that is easy to
handle, from manufacturing to installation and maintenance.
“The ‘Chulha’ and its chimney are easy to transport thanks
to their modular design. They are quick to assemble and
broken parts can be easily replaced over time” (Karve 2007).
Final design and its benefitsSampoorna (meaning ‘Complete’) with integral steamer:
price around 13-15 Euro
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking22 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 23
Technical product features bringing benefits include:
Bypass duct for efficient draft
- It ensures equal heat distribution and right turbulence under
the first and second pot, resulting in faster cooking and
boiling.
- It helps bring down the boiling time by 3 minutes, reaching
boiling time in 10-11 minutes: standard stoves boils around
22 minutes while our previous Chulha version (without
bypass) between 13-14 minutes.
Soot collector for cleaner air
- The soot collector reduces the amount of soot that reaches
the chimney and therefore both the risk of pipe obstruction
and the time required for chimney maintenance.
- Soot can be collected by passing the gases through a zig-zag
path in the chimney chamber at the stove level.
- This path built as a separate assembly can be removed and
scrubbed to clean the soot.
- As soot is collected at the earlier point the frequency of
cleaning chimney is reduced.
Chimney connector for easy maintenance and
installation
- Conventional chimneys, being monolithic blocks, needed
to be cleaned from the roof.
- Earlier chimney design was splitting chimney in 3 parts to
allow the cleaning from inside. However, this created an
issue of soot falling on the wall and surrounding from the
fixed piece during cleaning.
- Latest chimney design improvement moves the joint up
so that the top part of the pipe – connected to the roof –
is smaller and the fixed pipe -connected to the chimney –
is longer. the connection in-between holds the pipes and
when from cover is openend can help cleaning the fixed
part – ensuring all the soot alls in the chulha.
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking24 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 25
- Building community trust
- Collaborating with stakeholders with various interests
- Beyond ‘deep listen’ to ‘community engagement’
- Communicating value and benefits
The route to create the chulha was not without obstacles.
Initially, we faced a communication barrier that slowed
down interaction with the key stakeholders and end-users,
and therefore the entire design and development process.
We had to learn to speak a ‘language’ able to:
- create convergence of different (political, social and
economic) interests
- give a ‘voice’ to ‘vulnerable’ end-users, bringing their
viewpoints into the dialogue with multiple stakeholders
with precise, and often consolidated, opinions
Such a ‘language’ could be developed only through a long
and patient process of intensive listening and engagement.
An effort that, in the end, paid off.
With regard to environmental aspects in particular, it has been
estimated that, in theory, the ‘Sampoorna’ and ‘Saral’ stoves
could reduce indoor air pollution from smoke by up to 90%
in comparison with indoor open cooking fires. What’s more,
technical evaluations conducted by ARTI and College of Pune
show that exhaust gases, carbon monoxide emissions and fuel
consumption were reduced in comparison with other concrete-
based indoor smokeless stoves.
Challenges and achievements
However, no official quality standards of reference are currently
available to judge the technical performance of concrete stoves.
Various NGOs use different criteria to evaluate performance
and different values for acceptable emissions. As a consequence,
it becomes difficult to scientifically prove the added value
of the ‘Sampoorna’ and the ‘Saral’ in technical terms. At the
moment, our intention is to go beyond evaluating the technical
performance of our stoves, to fully assess their economic and
social performance over the long-term, in order to verify all
the benefits they claim to deliver. Current plans include a small
social impact study that will run from September 2009 to
February 2010.
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So far, to facilitate replication and diffusion of the ‘Sampoorna’
and ‘Saral’ stoves, design innovations have been recorded in
sketches and technical drawings. A comprehensive package
of communication and training materials, including posters
and videos, has also been created to explain how to produce,
distribute, install and maintain the stoves. With the support
of local NGOs, the intention is to allow Self-Help Groups
and citizens to use this knowledge for free. The hope is
that this will create not only better living conditions for the
end users – women and children – but also stimulate local
entrepreneurial activities centered on the production and
distribution of safe and healthy stoves.
ARTI will continue to play an essential role in all of this. It has
included our solutions in its portfolio of stoves (‘gas-fired’,
double wood-burning stove, simple concrete stove) for rural
and semi-urban communities, and it trains local stakeholders
to produce and distribute the most appropriate solution for
the selected target audience, according to income level and
infrastructural conditions.
The current production and distribution model proposed for
the ‘Sampoorna’ and ‘Saral’ stoves can easily be adapted as a
decentralized model, in which a trained entrepreneur invests
in a mould that is able to cover the demand of a couple of
villages, with 50-60 households each. However, the aim is to
shift to a semi-decentralized model where localization takes
What now and where to?
place at district level: with this model of scalability, the new
entrepreneur will be able to serve up to 30-40 villages, with
200-250 households each.
Besides the activities carried out by ARTI, ERIN Foundation
approached us with the intention of stimulating the broad
diffusion of the ‘Sampoorna’ and ‘Saral’ stoves in the rural
areas of Karnataka state (Southern India). Knowledge transfer
from our side has taken place and replication activities from
ERIN have started. Our ambition is to answer requests from
NGOs spread throughout India, but also in countries such as
Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc., where these stoves can provide
appropriate solutions to very similar people’s needs and
culinary habits.
Social impact study
In collaboration with ERIN foundation, by considering the
installation of 40 new Chulhas, we want to verify and assess
possible socio-economic and environmental implications of
our solution over space and time
The study will mainly focus on a better understanding of the
value generated for the end-users and their family members in
their contexts of living. However, it will also try to understand
the benefits generated for the key local stakeholders affected
and/or involved in its value network.
This pilot study will take place in rural areas around
Bangalore, over a period of 6 months
General questions to be addressed:
- What kind of benefits do the end-users experience, in
terms of functional performance, healthcare benefits,
potential wellbeing claims and lifestyle advantages?
- How would the local communities benefit from the
diffusion of the chulha, in terms of healthcare awareness
and local socio-economic development?
- What is the value / benefits created for the key
stakeholders involved?
- In which way do the local natural environment benefit?
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How have design and creativity contributed to sustainable
development in this overall humanitarian experience? What
are the major lessons learned? Although it is difficult to
provide a complete evaluation of an experiment still in
progress, it is possible to outline certain considerations
about the approach used and the results achieved to date.
From the very start of the experience, adopting a process in
which designers and researchers operate in a multidisciplinary
team, in an open dialogue with NGOs and various local
stakeholders bringing knowledge from the field, was essential
in envisioning an effective human-centered solution.
By developing a tangible design application, we were able to
bring our Philips brand to life and, consequently, establish
conditions for a return on brand equity: either by putting an
appropriate solution to the problem in place directly, or by
enabling local players to replicate and diffuse such a solution
autonomously. We have used our design knowledge beyond
traditional tasks of technical product design. Our designers,
often used to working in different domains and across various
businesses, have demonstrated that it is possible to assume a
steering role in organizing a proper network of competencies,
connecting multiple players with complementary expertise,
Conclusions
and facilitating a value co-creation process right up to its
implementation. Operating in contexts of developing and
emerging economies, we have certainly learned some basic
ground rules that should be considered in future projects,
especially when addressing under-served people and problems
within unfamiliar territories”.
First of all, we have realized that an understanding of the
local physical infrastructural, economic and socio-cultural
conditions is imperative before making any technological
choices. The challenge in coming up with an accessible,
affordable and sustainable solution for local needs is to
evaluate the best technological solution at a given moment
in time, rather than opt for the best available technology
(which is typical of a technology push approach). With our
Chulha for instance, insights from the targeted users and
local stakeholders helped us to understand current barriers
to cultural acceptance, as well as constraints on product
dissemination. Based on these insights the most feasible and
appropriate technological answer to achieve our objectives
could be given.
The design phase should be treated as a continuous and
iterative process, which goes backwards and forwards in
relation to the feedback received when the solution is tested
in the field. Any change and adjustment made to the initial
proposition needs to be evaluated in the field, not only in terms
of technical performance, but also in terms of possible far
reaching effects. For instance, feedback from evaluation of the
Chulha provided information to inspire improvements beyond
product and usage performance, to include instructions for
easy and cost-effective installation, distribution and production
– aspects that have stimulated new design interventions which
could result in the optimization of the entire value network.
Last but not least, it should be noted that the co-design
approach resulted not only in a way of delivering a solution
that better fit the context of application, but also enhanced the
potential benefits of the stakeholders involved, democratizing
the value creation process, and therefore increasing the
chance of implementing valuable solutions for all. Indeed,
with this approach, users and stakeholders worked together
in a participatory process where they all put their own
interests on the table. Key, in this regard, was to go beyond
listening intensively to local communities to acquiring their
true engagement, where users were even empowered in the
decision making process.
The question facing us now is this: how do we capitalize on
what we have learned? Our hope is that we can continue
make use of our imagination and design skills. It is our belief
that imagination, creativity and holistic thinking from design
communities – if they are underpinned by solid research to
help understand people and their socio-cultural and natural
environments – can become important assets to break down
boundaries and help move sustainable development forward.
After all, sustainability is, and remains, a collective creative
process of change.
Chulha, healthy indoor cooking30 Chulha, healthy indoor cooking 31
Community stakeholders:
- Mahalaxmi Bachat Gat, Kerwadi, Parbhani District, India
- Dr Suryakant Kulkarni, Socio Economic Development Trust,
Kerwadi, Dist Parbhani
- Dhanalaxmi Bachat Gat, Phaltan, Dist Pune, India
- Mrs. Ashabai’s Family, Kerwadi, Dist. Parbhani, India
- Mr. Bhosle and Family, Maltan, Dist Pune, India
Local entrepreneurs:
- MG Rural Technologies, Karad, District Satara, India
- Vaishali Bhosale, Individual entrepreneur, Maltan,
District Pune
- Shakuntala Ingale, Kerwadi, District Parbhani
Project partners (ARTI)
- Dr Priayadarshani Karve, Appropriate Rural Technology
Institute, Phaltan, India
- Research team at Phaltan centre of ARTI.
Research support
Green Earth Consulting, Pune, India
Acknowledgements
Perfomance testing and feedback
- College of Engineering, Pune, India
- Approvecho, Pondicherri, India
Philips Design team:
Core Team:
Unmesh Kulkarni, Praveen Mareguddi, Simona Rocchi,
Bas Griffioen
Philanthropy by Design program owner:
Yasu Kusume
Philanthropy by Design program founder:
Stefano Marzano
References:
- World Health Organization studies on indoor pollution
- ITDG studies
- Aprovecho
- ARTI research