Stop the Smoke - Reduce Global Warming

We said, “Do something to Stop the Smoke!”  Shangri-La Did!

Keeping up with Gabriele Lombardo, General Manager of the Shangri-La Hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is hard. The wiry Sicilian never stops and never stops doing and doing and doing….

Warm Heart sat down with Mr. Lombardo in October 2019 to show him the terrible human and economic damage Chiang Mai’s “burning” or “smoke” season does to North Thailand and the hospitality industry, he understood immediately. When Warm Heart explained how the great hotels of Chiang Mai could stop the smoke, he said, “We will do it.”

So began the Shangri-La “Stop the Smoke” project that with Covid-19 has also become an important employment and jobs training program. Shangri-La supported the creation of two community-based biochar making businesses and bought their first 50 tonnes of biochar production. This alone gave a large number of unemployed young men in very poor villages an amazing 300,000 baht ($10,000) over two months and stopped – as in entirely kept from happening – the release of 313 kg of PM_2.5, the killer component of smoke. (Lest you have a hard time imagining a kilogram of smoke, a single kg of smoke is equivalent to the smoke of 71,429 cigarettes.)

Then Covid-19 arrived.

The country went on lockdown. Tourism stopped. Hotels closed.

Hundreds of thousands of taxi and tuk-tuk drivers, street venders, guides, chamber maids and waiters had no jobs. They did what people do – they returned to their home villages. But in the hot season, there were no jobs in the countryside and little food.

Enter Shangri-La.

What do you do with 50 tonnes of biochar?

Donate it, sure, but to whom?

With assistance from Aom Kwanpirom, Warm Heart Biochar Project Director, Shangri-La sought out small organizations training the urban unemployed to become farmers and either starting urban farms on empty plots or degraded soil near home. What these organizations need most is high quality soil amendment material to provide fertility to future gardens. What they need is ground biochar mixed with organic matter.

Suddenly, 50 tonnes did not look like enough biochar. Warm Heart found itself wondering how much of its own reserves were going to be needed!

Distribution started on May 29, with Warm Heart and Shangri-La staff volunteers helping with the hand-over and application.

The rains have stopped, and our teams are out making biochar from their corn waste – removing many tons of smoke from the air! Our first storage shed is ready to take in the output. Your donations have given us the momentum to attract additional groups to support our work and open markets for biochar products.

We started with one village and another village that we trained last year, has gone ahead to make biochar on their own. In Mae Wak, we have the corn waste of 130 families in huge piles ready to burn. The village set up a team of young men with 50 TLUD barrels from Warm Heart to make biochar instead of smoke. They make 500 kg, half a metric ton every day. The second village, Mae Na Chon is also making around half a ton of biochar a day.

[This daily ton equates to 5 tons of corn waste turned into biochar daily – at 6.26 kg of PM2.5 particles per ton of waste, that’s 31.3 kg of smoke that is not going into the air each day. Each of those kilograms of smoke is the equivalent of 71,429 cigarettes. In addition, greenhouse gases have been burned off before they go into the atmosphere.]

As the tourist industry is hit by the haze from the smoke – our once beautiful cities have grey skies and terrible air pollution – the local governments and hotel industry are partnering to address the issues. Warm Heart presented its program to have villages make biochar in exchange for advance commitments from business sponsors. This will help create markets for biochar and biochar products that have been a key component in the successful growth of biochar production.

Thanks to your support, we have an established program with feet on the ground and clear outcomes. Funding for additional villages to make biochar has been pledged and the specific plans are being completed.

Please tell your friends and keep the support coming in!

Warm Heart is very grateful to have been invited to join this year’s inaugural Climate Action Fund project. We will be highlighting updates for you as this new program evolves.

In the meantime, lots of progress! Aom, our project manager, has been hard at work in Mae Wak village, Mae Chaem. The folks there are making the most of the 10 tonnes of biochar fertilizer we donated. She also has a couple of teams making char as fast as they can before the rain starts.

Rains Begin

Now that the rain has finally come, the growing season has begun, kicking off the cycle that leads to the burning season.

We are setting up one Community Social Enterprise to be ready to divert as much crop burning into biochar creation as possible.

Establishing a market for the biochar

Our biochar product line will soon be available in the largest “green” retailer in Chiang Mai, Rimping Markets. The price is competitive with “dirty” charcoal. But ours burns smoke-free, burns hotter, lasts longer, environmental contributor to improving our world. Establishing a market for the biochar is crucial to the success of the future Social Enterprises.

Moving to the Fast Lane

Warm Heart has the solution to the smoky season problem, a win-win fix that just needs to spread far and wide.

Shangri-la, one of Chiang Mai’s premiere resorts, recognizes the solution and has reached out to Warm Heart to help us put our solution to work on a broader scale. We will be working together with the heavy hitters in the community, to get everyone’s help setting up Biochar Social Enterprise Co-ops all across Northern Thailand.

But that is not all that has been going on.

Across the Globe

Our partners in Africa are making great strides in sharing and spreading biochar, teaching hundreds of farmers how to make and use biochar.

And they are having great results, too!

Thank you for your support. We need to continually be widening our audience. Please share with at least 1 friend!

Evelind and Michael

Coming soon to a Rimping near you! 

Our first Farmer's Cooperative is fully funded!

A huge thank you, YOU helped make this happen!

Our project is underway! 

Momentum is picking up, our Project Manager, Aom Kwanpirom Suksri, has moved on site and has officially begun organization of our first farmer biochar cooperative. Our goal is to set up a replicable model and help establish 9 more co-ops. We are on our way to funding a second co-op.

Aom was instrumental in the success of our preliminary Mae Chaem project in 2017. From teaching farmers how to make biochar ovens to overseeing the whole project, Aom helped lead farmers to make 150 tons of biochar.

Aom is totally dedicated to biochar and community development. Follow her on Facebook (links below) 

As far as the gosh darn news, we held 2nd place in the Climate Fund Challenge up until the last few hours, when we dropped to third. Big thanks to everyone who helped pull in last minute donations to try and hang on to that coveted 2nd Place.

All is not lost yet. GlobalGiving will be choosing 4 Projects from the top 20 to join #1 and 2 in the year long Climate Fund project. SO we are keeping our fingers crossed!

We are so excited to start this project, may it be the first step in bringing about real change in the Agricultural practice of open field burning. We invite you to take this journey with us!

Evelind and Michael

P.S. Want to continue to have a big impact on the success of this project? Choose an amount, $10, $15, $25, set it up as a recurring donation, and in the 4th month GlobalGiving will match your donation!

Links:

• Aom's Facebook
• Warm Heart Foundation (FB) Thai