The Improved Cooking Stove Project (ICS)
"The ICS is extremely simple and straight forward, easy to build locally, and showing immediate effect, making it a very successful programme."

It didn't take long before the community health workers that serve the health centres realised that much of the ailments they were seeing were due to the villagers cooking on open fires inside their homes. Women and children are the victims of poisonous smoke that fill their houses every day, where they cook, play and study. Some of the burns seen in these villages, caused by falling into the open fires, are horrendous and could have been prevented. The indoor air pollution caused by the release of carbon monoxide triggers nasty illnesses like Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) including pneumonia; cor pulmonalae; conjunctivitis; adverse reproductive outcomes (low-birth weight and increased still-births); lung cancer; increased infant morbidity/mortality; depressed immune response; chronic obstructive lung diseases (COLD) - bronchitis, emphysema, asthma, and skin and eye infection.

To try to alleviate some of these problems, CWS/N started the ICS project in March 1998 in the Saimarang Village Development Committee area (VDC), where the first DCHC was built as well. From then onwards, the project progressed into a new VDC each year, finally covering the whole of our catchment area, and providing thousands of families with the option to install one of these clean and environmentally friendly stoves. The ICS guides smoke out of the house through a chimney, so the inhabitants are no longer inhaling dangerous toxics, and the house remains clean. It is a closed stove so the risk of burns is reduced to a minimum, while the heat of the flames is more concentrated.

This, together with the fact that the ICS has two potholes to cook on, means no energy is wasted, and the food cooks faster. Over 50% of wood consumption can be saved like this, which is a huge relieve for the surrounding forests, an invaluable asset of every village in Nepal. It is very cheap to build and costs approximately under US $4, making it affordable even for the poorest families.
Furthermore, the locals only have to spend half the time collecting and carrying wood, a backbreaking daily chore, enabling them to focus on different income generating efforts.The recipe to build an ICS is extremely simple and straight forward, easy to build locally, and showing immediate effect, making it a very successful programme. A family member collects clay, easily available in CWS/N's working area, which is mixed with dung and goat hairs or rice husk. Wooden moulds are used to shape this mixture into bricks that are kept in the sun for a few days to dry. These form the main components of the ICS, held together by more clay and reinforced by ten iron rods. Locals are trained up by
CWS/N staff to implement this project and construct the stoves for the people
in their own community that want to enjoy the advantages of a smoke-free
house. The house owners pay 150 RS towards the construction and 100 RS
for the iron rods, altogether no more than under US $4. The average costs
to run this programme for a year lies around US $4750, making it a highly cost-effective enterprise.

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