PRODUCTS
Envirofit’s engineering department works with a combination of university researchers, national laboratories, and industry experts to develop the highest performing, most reliable products in the market. In particular, Envirofit works closely in sponsorship with Colorado State University’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory to develop stove technologies, standards, and test protocols that will drive the development of clean cookstoves and improvement in health and safety of households throughout the world.
COOKSTOVES
Becoming the market leader in the
design, development and delivery of clean cookstoves, Envirofit used a
market-based model to develop and commercialize high performing biomass
cookstoves that are efficient, durable, affordable, and appeal to
consumers. In addition to the aesthetic qualities, Envirofit’s stoves
are designed to offer economic, health and environmental benefits,
reducing smoke and toxic emissions by up to 80 percent and reducing fuel
use, fuel cost, and cooking time by up to 60 percent. The stoves reduce
emissions of carbon dioxide by up to 60 percent, black carbon by up to
40 percent. Envirofit's cookstoves are robustly engineered and
culturally customized to meet the environmental needs of our planet and
the desires of families around the world. Envirofit is committed to
designing cookstove that help families breathe healthier air while
saving time and money on cooking and fuel costs.Environmental Impact
• 80% reduction in smoke & toxic emissions
• 60% reduction in CO2
• 40% reduction of Black Carbon
• 50% reduced cooking time
• 60% reduced fuel requirement
• 40% improvement in cooking efficiency
LIGHTING
Envirofit's family of solar lighting products provide a reusable rechargeable light source to brighten the whole house. At the center of indoor living, our lights create a safe, comfortable environment for either the workspace or the home at an affordable price. After years of quality testing our products are built to last in any setting, from the urban apartment to the country homestead and are perfect for power outages and emergency situations.
INTERNATIONAL IMPACT
According to the WHO, cooking over an open fire inside the home is the equivalent smoke exposure to inhaling 2 packs of cigarettes a day. With half the world’s population cooking over a 3-stone fire inside their home, the indoor air pollution from inefficient stoves leads to 4 million deaths a year- more than HIV, Malaria, and TB combined. Women and children who primary carry this burden can spend up to 1/3 of their family’s income and up to 4 hours a day cooking, serving, cleaning the kitchen, and collecting firewood, venturing far from home where they risk assault and rape. Smoke from unimproved cooking sources also takes a global toll on the environment, producing 1 billion tons of CO2 every year, as much as all of the cars in the US. It is widely acknowledged that replacing the traditional open fire with improved clean cookstoves can provide a solution to address the scale of this global burden. With over 700,000 clean technology cookstoves sold, Envirofit’s social enterprise-based model represents a new, more sustainable approach to tackling the global problem of household air pollution:
- Allowing over 3.5 million people to breathe easier
- Reducing carbon dioxide emissions by over 11 million tons
- Creating more than 1000 jobs
- Saving our customers over $96 million USD in reduced fuel cost
HISTORY
Envirofit was created to unite top-tier clean energy research with consumer driven product design to bring sustainable and scalable market-based solutions to emerging markets. Envirofit was formed in 2003 as a spin off company out of Colorado State University’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory to develop well-engineered technology solutions to solve global energy and health challenges. Envirofit began by producing and selling direct injection retrofit kits for two-stroke motorcycle engines, in the Philippians, a project that won the Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2008.
In 2007 Envirofit turned its attention to clean cookstoves, partnering with The Shell Foundation’s Breathing Space Program to prove the market for the development of a scalable clean cookstove solution. This partnership aims to achieve significant, verifiable, long-term reductions in global indoor air pollution by combining a economically-sustainable enterprise approach with market-driven research, product development and expertise working in emerging markets. Developing their first commercial clean cookstove model, Envirofit began its pilot program in India in 2008. After an exponential increase in sales in the first two years Envirofit began to scale the model in 2010. To meet the demands of consumers in different markets, Envirofit combined the global knowledge of cooking cultures from field-based research with innovative clean cooking technologies to design new products using advanced computational tools, rigorous performance testing. In 2009 Envirofit won Time Magazine’s Hero’s of the Environment Award followed by the Economist’s Energy and the Environment Innovators of the Year in 2013.
Today, The social enterprise has grown in 7 years from a small pilot in India with one stove model to an industry leading company with multiple models and soon approaching 1M sold in more than 45 countries. Envirofit has established manufacturing operations in Eastern Africa, and soon in Western Africa and Latin America, with extensive distribution networks in place. Successfully proving the concept for a mass-produced consumer-centered clean cookstove design Envirofit helped to incubate a clean cookstoves sector that now hosts many producers and distributors.
