Lekarbon

Long description

Our project consists of an urban solid waste (USW) collection system and a treatment facility where organic USW will be processed into charcoal briquettes for cooking fuel. This project will include three neighbourhoods of San Cristobal de las Casas (SCLC), Mexico: Jardines del Carmen, La Maya and Insurgentes.

In the USW collection system, residents will sort their organic USW, plastics, paper and cardboard, glass and metals at home. Subsequently informal waste pickers will be employed, equipped and empowered to collect the sorted USW from the households. The retrieved organic USW will be brought to the treatment facility, while the other types of USW will be sold to bulk USW buyers.

At the treatment facility, the organic waste will be shredded, dried, pyrolysed and compressed into charcoal briquettes. The charcoal briquettes will be sold as cooking fuel to replace the use of firewood and charcoal, which are sourced from local forests.

Lekarbon will attack three local problems:

-Landfilling: 280,000 kilograms of waste are landfilled per day in our city.

-Deforestation: between 353 and 1,000 trees per day are cut to satisfy the local demand of firewood for cooking.

-Vulnerable population. The majority of informal waste pickers are women, children or indigenous and live in extreme poverty.

Investments in this project will be used to build the organic USW treatment facility and organise an USW management strategy that has benefits for people and planet, and that is economically sustainable by the charcoal briquettes business case.

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