Piles of dung bricks like these can be seen all across the southern belt of Nepal

Trees have nearly all but disappeared in the southern belt of Nepal known as the Terai. Where people used to burn wood to cook food, now they are forced to use collected and dried animal dung as a fuel, which used to be saved as a precious fertiliser.
Soil in the fields is fast loosing it's quality, much time is lost preparing and drying dung, whilst the women and children are exposed to horrid and damaging smoke.  

Since August 2010, CWS has been supporting the development of an efficient, safe and smokeless dung burning stove with technical support from Engineers Without Borders Australia.
The stove being developed uses much less dung fuel, emits little smoke (which is vented away from the cooking area), and it being fabricated locally. Further more work has been carried out to reduce the time taken to prepare the dung, whilst removing the fertilisers, to go back onto the fields.

In the project year 2011/2012 it is proposed to carry out community trials of 135 of these new stoves to assess acceptability, performance and durability in use.
Technical testing and certification of the stoves will be carried out in a parallel exercise, supported by Engineers Without Borders at the Centre for Rural Technology / Nepal. The certification of the stove can lead to a government subsidy for the final model.

Improved dung burning cook stove currently under development

Impact:
Advantages of a project utilising this technology:

1. Safer, healthier & cleaner home environment
2. Around 40% less dung burned
3. More dung going back onto the fields.
4. Fertiliser washed out of dung bricks made, and used back on the fields.
5. Trees planted alongside stove distribution (as a contribution from the users)
6. Time saved in making dung bricks.